


this town is a song about you

by synecdochic



Series: take these broken wings [1]
Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Chronic Pain, Clones, Communication, Disability, Domesticity, Family, Found Family, Goa'uld, Grieving, Identity Issues, Imported, Injury Recovery, Knitting, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Reasonable Accomodations, Recovery, Tattoos, The Perpetual iPod War, Unreasonable Accomodations, Wakes & Funerals, house porn, internalized ableism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-07-06
Updated: 2007-12-02
Packaged: 2018-05-30 08:15:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 86,959
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6415909
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/synecdochic/pseuds/synecdochic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A serial story of what-if: what if Cam had been a little more injured in his 302 crash, and what if Jack's clone had been a little bit less willing to walk away.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> (Originally [posted](https://synecdochic.dreamwidth.org/205349.html) 2007-07-06.)
> 
> This story turned into an epic universe (and inspired three others with slightly tweaked premises), but book one was written serially, and as late as installment seven or eight I was swearing it wasn't really a series and I wasn't really writing a novel. So, each chapter is fairly self-contained. (I actually argued with myself a lot about how I was going to present it on AO3.) The earlier chapters are also a little rough; it took me a while to settle into it. Please forgive any inconsistencies and retcons!
> 
> There are age-of-consent issues present throughout this whole thing: JD's body was cloned two years ago, from someone who was in his mid-50s (and whose life he still remembers living), and looks about seventeen. So I didn't tag for underage, although it certainly is interpreted as such by outsiders.
> 
> This was originally just called 'Broken Wings' when I was posting it the first time around, but I retroactively decided that would be the universe name and renamed book one.
> 
> Comes with [soundtrack](https://synecdochic.dreamwidth.org/179649.html).

## 

one

Cameron Mitchell pushes himself and prods himself, sits up when all he wants is to lie down and props himself up when all he wants is to fall down. Day after endless day, from the bed to the wheelchair, from the wheelchair to the PT bars, from the days when they have to keep him in the secured wing of the Academy hospital because he's babbling his guts out under morphine to the days when his momma's trying to get him to come back home to work out the last few months of his recovery. The months when all his damn determination will result in him walking or not walking, no way to tell, and Momma never says one way or the other, but he knows she's thinking: at least the house is already fitted out for a cripple, if it winds up that my boy lost his legs to the Air Force just like his daddy did. 

Cam won't let it. He pushes himself and he drives himself, takes every lick and every lump without complaining, sucks it up with a grim determination until the nurses and the doctors and the physical therapists start whispering behind his back about how if anyone deserves a stroke of luck, it's him. He suffers through every last inch of it with as much grace and as much dignity as circumstances will let him have, and at the end of it, he stands on his own two feet -- three toes lost to frostbite, the shoe insets still new and rubbing the stumps raw -- and looks General O'Neill in the eye and on the level as he tells the General he's planning on opting for the handshake and the medical discharge to go along with his Purple Heart. 

O'Neill opens his mouth, looking to talk Cam out of it, maybe. But something in Cam's face must convince him, because all he says is that the program's losing a good man. Maybe, Cam thinks, but he's done his time; he's given his all, and he's done his best, and he'd gotten lucky and luck like that only comes along once. And maybe, in the end, it's easier for him to finally know that no, he can't live up to what his daddy had done when he'd taken his lumps and come up swinging. Like finally scratching an itch he'd only been half-conscious of having.

He moves into a furnished second-floor walk-up in downtown Colorado Springs, over a tiny Thai place run by a family who seem to consider him their personal responsibility to feed after a few weeks. Close enough that he can make it back to the hospital for his twice-weekly appointments. Every time he trudges up the stairs -- slowly at first, then with gaining strength, gritting his teeth against the pins and needles of circulation that will probably always be uncertain -- he gives silent thanks for the simple fact that he can.

He'd thought he'd enjoy having nothing to do for a while. An extended vacation, a chance to get his head screwed on straight and examine his soul to divine what he wanted to do with the rest of his life. He hadn't counted on the fact that he's _been_ doing nothing for the better part of a year, had read all the books he'd always promised himself he would and had exhausted the already-limited supply of daytime TV, but everything he thinks of -- every option he can come up with, every classified ad he circles and comes back to and puts down the phone before he can call for -- leaves him feeling cold and numb.

Two days before he burns the last of his terminal leave, two days before his last chance to put the brakes on, he's sitting on the couch, telephone in hand and O'Neill's number on a scrap of paper in front of him -- _changed my mind, General_ , or _didn't know what else I could have done_ , or even just _fuck it, you got me, now figure out something to do with me_ \-- and there's a knock on his door. 

When he opens it, a teenaged kid is staring back at him. "Mitchell?" the kid asks. 

Cam frowns. "Yeah," he says. The kid looks familiar. Sounds familiar. 

The kid nods, once. Shoves his hands into the pockets of the leather bomber jacket he's wearing and pushes his way past Cam into the living room. He looks around himself with what Cam recognizes as disdain; the cleaning service comes in once a week, but Cam's out of practice with keeping things neat. He spares a brief flash of _who the fuck does this kid think he is_ , before the kid turns back around and pins him with a look that --

"Seems like you and I could help each other out," the kid says.

\-- a look that Cam last saw looking back at him from the eyes of a one-star General.

It's crazy. It's impossible. Then again, a year before, Cam had spent fifteen frozen hours slowly dying in a downed plane made from scavenged alien technology, after having shot down alien ships bound and determined to invade Earth, so who's he to say impossible? The kid's seventeen, eighteen at most, but he walks like O'Neill and sounds like O'Neill. And he can't be O'Neill's son, because the brain living behind those old man's eyes has shaped the face into expressions no teenager should ever know. 

"You don't exist," Cam says to the kid. Best to get the cards on the table straight up.

The kid's lips twist. "Yeah. That's what the old man would tell you. I'm Ja -- Jonathan Nielson. You can call me JD. And yes, I'm exactly who -- and what -- you think I am." 

Cam grips the back of the recliner -- he'd forgotten to grab his cane when he got up, and he can get around for a little while without needing it, but the combination of shock and confusion is making his knees a little shaky. "How?" he asks.

"The Asgard. And yeah, I've got his memories, and yeah, it sucks about as much as you might imagine, and yeah, I really don't want to talk about it. And you're another one."

The pit of Cam's stomach turns over. He knows what the kid is -- _knows_ , down with the part of his subconscious that reacts to the slimy things that crawl free when you turn over a rock. _Clone_. And the kid's saying -- no, Cam had been _hurt_ in the crash, hadn't died -- but he'd spent so much of those first few weeks floating in and out of consciousness, would he have even known -- but no, they wouldn't have let him walk away from the program if he'd been --

The kid -- JD -- sees the panic starting to spread and shakes his head, quickly. "No. Not another clone. Another person who got fucked over and tossed out. And now you're looking for something to do with your life, aren't you?"

"Yeah," Cam says quietly. "But if you're looking for revenge, I'm not your guy."

JD shakes his head again, makes a quick slashing motion in midair with both hands. Paces back and forth, just a few steps. He's more vibrant than Cam's ever seen O'Neill be: constant motion, barely-repressed energy thrumming just under his skin. He strips off the jacket with a quick motion and tosses it over the arm of the chair. He's got a wifebeater on under it. Cam catches a quick glimpse of ink stretching blackly up JD's arms, sinuous curves twining up JD's biceps and disappearing into shadow standing out beneath the white of the tank top, before JD is stepping into Cam's kitchen. 

"Revenge is stupid," JD calls back, and isn't _that_ a surprise, because Cam would have sworn on a stack of Bibles that O'Neill understands vengeance more thoroughly than anyone else could. It makes him realize just how long ago JD and O'Neill must have -- separated -- for JD to have changed that much. Cam hears his refrigerator door open, and the clink, clink of bottles being shifted, the rustling of paper takeout bags. "I fucked up when I had them make my ID. I never planned to stay put where they put me -- Christ, like they could even _think_ I'd stick around in _high school_ , for cryin' out loud -- but I hadn't counted on the fact that I'm going to look this fucking _young_ for another five, six years easy. Baby face. I need a partner. This pad thai still good?"

Cam feels a little bit like a hurricane's breezed into his apartment. He makes his careful way around the recliner, around the coffee table, and sits back down on the couch. "Leftover from tonight," he says, because he doesn't know what else he could say.

"Good. I'm starving." The sound of a drawer, the sound of cutlery; JD's making himself at home. He comes back out a minute later with the Styrofoam takeout container in his left hand, already open, fork in the right hand being used to stuff his face. The two opened bottles of beer he's holding between the fingers of his left hand clink together. He puts the fork in his mouth along with another mouthful of pad thai, shifts one beer to the hand it freed up, and passes it over to Cam. Cam takes it. "I need a partner," JD says again, around the fork and the pad thai. "My fake paper doesn't have me legal for another year." 

Even this close, Cam can't quite tell what JD's ink means. It's stark and almost tribal, but not quite sharp enough; he can see what might be a stylized snake, and the curves of script that might be Farsi, and if he unfocuses his eyes a little, the sentences swim into focus as building hieroglyphs Cam can't read. Below the hollow of JD's throat, right at the center of his collarbone, the lines of script narrow down to a single sentence mirrored on either side, with an upside-down triangle circled by a halo in the direct center as punctuation. 

"Partner for what?" Cam asks.

JD smiles. It isn't an unpleasant smile, not at all; it's sweet and angelic and, Cam thinks, almost heartfelt. But it sits on his face wrong either way: too old and knowing for the teenager he seems to be, and too free and unfettered to have ever come from O'Neill.

"You know computers?" JD asks. 

Cam knows computers. Always a hobby, never to the point of being a marketable skill, but whatever JD's been doing for the two years since his "birth" (Cam worms a few more details out of him over the rest of the night's conversation), he's clearly been boning up. O'Neill's got a reputation for being the village idiot when it comes to technology. Either JD's a fast learner, or O'Neill's reputation is a useful smokescreen. 

"Look," JD says, when Cam hasn't kicked him out after twenty minutes. "I've got the bike parked downstairs on the street. Lemme move it into the alley and get my stuff, then I'll explain."

"You can bring it up into the stairwell," Cam says. It's not the worst neighborhood, but it's not the best neighborhood either, and bicycles go missing.

JD gives him a don't-be-stupid look. "Motorcycle, not bicycle," he says. Then grins again, one quick flash. "And if they run the plates, they won't even find that it's stolen. Gimme five. You need anything from downstairs?"

It's the first time JD's said anything to imply that Cam's not completely capable of going up and down the stairs himself, but it's so offhand that Cam barely even registers it. "Naw," he says, and then realizes that the offer actually relaxed him, in some indescribable way. He hates it when people treat him as anything less than completely fully-abled -- hates having doors held and things fetched -- and that's why he stuck here instead of going home to his momma and his dad, but he hates it even more when people pretend that they don't see the cane, the last remnants of limp that he might never lose. JD isn't catering to him, but he isn't ignoring it, either. Just another fact: _Mitchell moves slower than I do, so I'll run down the stairs if the stairs need running._

JD's back upstairs inside of ten minutes, carrying a battered old duffel that looks about as old as O'Neill. He lifts out a hard-shelled laptop case and kicks the duffel aside, forgotten, then throws himself on the couch next to Cam. The laptop, when he frees it from its case, is state-of-the-art; JD's fingers stroke the keyboard like a lover's curves. "So," he says. "The plan."

It's a good plan. JD's got software half-built already, flexible and extensible and tailored with a career military eye to the gaps in the military-industrial complex they always turn to contractors to fill. Cam's role will be learning enough to get up to the level of junior programmer (he's pretty sure JD doesn't need a junior programmer; JD just snorts and says _take me twice as long if I do it myself_ ) and being the guy who puts on the suit and tie for face to face meetings. 

Cam's respectability, Cam's resume. The powers that be will listen more to a guy with a bunch of medals than they would to a teenager. He's strangely okay with that. The one thing JD is adamant about is that they will not go near Stargate Command. Won't even go near the Air Force; he's pitching GPS satcomm software first, intended for Naval carriers. Cam doesn't push.

Sixty-forty split on income for the first five years, in JD's favor; patents and royalties to be shared equally. Travel costs to come out of the operating fund they'll set up with the money from the first contract. After five years, they'll renegotiate. "I don't see us staying in milspec much past that, anyway," JD says. "I've got other plans."

"Which are?" Cam asks.

And there's that smile again. "We'll see. If it pans out. You in, or not?"

"Why me?" Cam asks. "You could pretty much have your pick of partners."

JD laces his fingers together, turns his palms inside-out, stretches them high over his head. The hem of his tank top rides up over the frayed waistband of his jeans, displaying a stomach Cam could probably bounce a quarter off of. "Yeah," he says. "But you got fucked over too."

"Stupid reason," Cam says.

"Maybe." JD shrugs and lets his arms drop. "Still why I picked you."

Cam won't argue; stupid or not, _insane_ or not -- and this is plenty insane -- he's actually starting to get interested. JD's plan is solid; he's got projections, facts and figures, charts that show them with a living wage inside of six months and a _comfortable_ living wage within a year. Cam's no computer genius, but his degree's in electrical engineering, and it shouldn't take him too long to catch up. (He wonders, for just a second, what O'Neill's degree is in, but he's already realizing it's best if he doesn't make reference to JD's former life.) JD's thought this through. Probably has been thinking it for a while.

"I'm in," he says. "You can crash on the couch."

It's easier than Cam thought it would be. That first night, he shuffle-thumps into the bathroom to take his nightly shower, strips off the t-shirt and sweatpants and socks and shoes he uses to keep himself from having to look at the ruin of what his body used to be, and he forgets until he's already made his painstaking way through his evening routine that he's given up the last place he has where he doesn't have to pretend he's all right, pretend he's normal and capable and doesn't need help at all. He's already halfway to his bedroom, holding up the towel he's wearing with one hand and thumping the cane along with the other -- with the weakness in his legs, without the shoes and their inserts, he needs it; the physical therapists tell him it might take years before he can walk barefoot and unassisted again. And he'd forgotten JD was there.

But JD only looks up from where he's settled on the couch, taking in all of Cam's scars and all of his twisted spots without so much as blinking, and says, "You need me to move my shit?"

Cam's searching his face for any sign of pity, any sign of sympathy, and there's nothing there, any more than there was earlier. It eases something. He's been playing "able-bodied" for his doctors and nurses and physical therapists and especially for his family, for the random people he passes on the street and everyone who sees him and can't look past the limp and the cane to see the man behind them, and he realizes, suddenly, that he doesn't have to play able-bodied for JD. Not at all. It's too easy to look at that angel face and forget he's not dealing with a kid after all. Jack O'Neill, he remembers, looked at him the same way. "No," he says. "You're fine where you are."

JD nods. "I get in your way, you whack me," he says, nodding again to the cane, and then turns half his attention back to the laptop's screen. With the other half, he says, absently, "Looks like that sucked a hell of a lot."

It surprises Cam how easy it is to say "Yeah. Yeah, it kinda did," and he's a little bit lighter when he gets himself settled into bed.

Mrs. Chaisorn, from the restaurant downstairs, starts doubling his takeout portions, and drops hints about how nice it is that Cam's brother came to help him out. Cam doesn't correct her. They look enough alike -- if you squint -- that it's plausible, and it's an easy enough explanation for why he's got a seventeen-year-old kid crashing on his couch. JD would actually fit in pretty well with Clan Mitchell, Cam thinks, and stifles a laugh at the thought of Momma and JD going toe to toe.

Over the next week, JD eats him out of house and home (faintly apologetic about it the whole time, but Cam remembers what it had been like to be seventeen and always feeling that pit in his stomach, and from the few things JD lets slip, Cam thinks he hadn't exactly been getting regular meals for a while) and falls upon Cam's beer like it's water and he's dying of dehydration. The laptop stays glued to his side; Cam even catches JD balancing it on one palm, eyes fixed on the screen, as he heads for the bathroom. Cam drops a grand on technical books at the Barnes  & Noble and chews his way through C++ and Assembler, cursing the whole damn way. 

And it's almost comfortable. Cam's used to bunking in two or more, and -- despite all the simmering energy -- JD doesn't take up much space in a room, like he can make himself so small and still he doesn't even register on the radar. It takes Cam a few days to put his finger on what's so familiar about it; back in Kosovo, they'd had a few guys drifting in and out, the guys who did the things that even Special Ops wouldn't touch. JD's got the same feel to him: when he's there, he's _there_ , present and vibrant and alive. And when he's concentrating on something, it's like he just -- shuts it down. Ceases to exist as anything other than whatever he's concentrating on.

Cam realizes, after about five days in, that he's doing JD a favor, too. JD doesn't treat him like a cripple, but he's learned not to treat JD like a kid. One too many times of looking at a teenager's body and seeing the six decades of life living inside it. He barely even notices the packaging anymore.

His life, Cam thinks, has gotten steadily weirder since the day he said "yes" when the Groom Lake boys came calling. 

JD's up every morning with the sunrise. They both are; old habits run deep. But JD doesn't specifically call attention to the fact that he disappears for an hour before breakfast and comes back sweaty. Ten mile run every morning, Cam figures, from how JD's dropped hints about his route: down Pikes Peak, up the railroad tracks, around Monument Valley Park, all the way up past the hospital and back again down Cascade, and he's back up the stairs and not even breathing too hard while Cam fusses in the kitchen to feed them both. Cam does his own exercises while JD's out. They aren't as sweeping as JD's, but they probably hurt a hell of a lot more.

It's nice, in some ways, to have someone else around. For one thing, Cam can start cooking again; never saw the point when it was just him to feed, and JD will eat just about anything Cam puts in front of him, but it's a matter of pride to be able to feed his guest. For another, JD's damn handy to have around. He never makes it obvious, never calls Cam's attention to it, but suddenly the leaky faucets aren't leaking anymore and the kitchen cabinets have had their contents redistributed so the stuff Cam uses most is within easy reach and the living room's been rearranged so Cam doesn't catch his cane on the table every time he walks by. 

All things Cam would have done himself, if he'd been able to. But JD doesn't mention shower bars, and he doesn't suggest moving to a place with an elevator, and when they go up and down the stairs to grab dinner, or when JD tags along when Cam's running errands, JD always manages to stay one step behind on Cam's off side, running crowd interference and letting Cam set the pace, without ever making it feel like Cam's holding him up.

And then, two weeks into their little arrangement, Cam hits one of the bad days. Pressure front rolling in from the mountains, and it makes every lump of scar tissue, from the small of his back all down his legs to the ruins of his feet, ache like they've been freshly savaged; it's a physical therapy day, and he only manages to float through it on two oxycodone and his own damn stubborn pride, and when he makes it back to the apartment stairs he's tempted for just a minute to sit down on the bottom step and wait right there until it all goes away. But he took this place to prove something to himself, and so he goes up one step at a time -- leaning on the handrail, leaning on his cane, every tread a mountain to climb and a cross to bear -- and all he wants to do when he unlocks the door is fall onto the couch for a week and not get up again.

JD's on the couch, though. On the couch with his legs twisted thoughtlessly up underneath him, feet tucked under each opposite thigh and his laptop balanced on his knees, and for just a minute, Cam hates him.

He leans back against the door as he gets it closed, the thought of the twenty feet to his bed suddenly more than he can bear. Something about the sound of it penetrates JD's concentration, and JD looks up. Then winces. 

It's the first time Cam's seen sympathy on that face. Still no pity, but it doesn't matter. Sympathy's bad enough. He doesn't know what his expression must look like in return, but JD's up off the couch in a minute, setting his laptop down on the table, and disappears into the bathroom like a shot. Cam hears the clink, clank, wheeze of the pipes as the water starts running. A minute goes by, then another, and then JD's back in front of him.

JD reaches out and takes the cane, props it up by the door, and Cam almost protests. But JD's holding out both his hands, his intentions clear, and Cam snarls. "You're not my fucking physical therapist."

"Nope," JD says, his voice somehow a mixture of understanding and command. It makes Cam want to straighten up his spine. General's voice. "But I know that if you don't get your ass into a hot tub damn soon, you're going to be out of commission all week. I'll steer. You lean." 

Cam grits his teeth, wraps his hands around JD's elbows, and leans. He expects JD to fold under his weight, but he's stronger than Cam expected. Perfectly capable of walking backwards without looking, too. Cam gets the sense that JD carries a mental map of where everything around him is in relation to him. 

Cam gets the sense that he, himself, is part of JD's mental map. Mental, physical, emotional. JD's been watching him, and now JD is walking him into the bathroom and dropping easily to his knees to unlace Cam's shoes and pulling down Cam's sweats and sitting Cam down on the side of the tub (one hand there to brace him, to keep him from falling over, like he wants to, like his body wants him to), and JD is stripping him down to skin and scars, and JD is completely matter-of-fact about the whole fucking thing but it's still too damn much.

"Lay _off_ ," Cam says, pushing JD away -- his arms still work at least. He shoves harder than he'd intended. JD goes over backwards, toppling out of his crouch to land sprawled on the floor, and Cam grits his teeth and -- because JD's _right_ , god damn him -- grips the sides of the tub and levers his nigh-useless damn legs into the water.

He wants JD _out_. Naked with another man standing fully clothed over him is too much like the days when he was dependent on nurses and tubes and bags and sponges to even fucking exist. But JD cocks his head and narrows his eyes, like he's taking Cam's measure, and then he strips off his t-shirt and tosses it on top of the discarded pile of Cam's clothing. 

For a second, Cam thinks JD might be intending to climb in with him. But JD stays kneeling on the tile, next to the tub, and stares Cam down. JD's seen Cam naked, but Cam can't remember ever seeing JD naked in return. When JD's wearing a t-shirt, his ink disappears under it, and he looks like any one of the teenagers that go zooming by on the streets below. When JD's bare-chested, Cam can see it all: elbows to shoulders, along the clavicle, dark contrast twining against pale skin.

JD keeps his eyes trained on Cam's face. His eyes are steady, matter-of-fact. He holds out both of his arms, like he's presenting them for inspection, and then turns around so Cam can see his back. The ink spreads down to his waist like a phoenix, like a story, like a map nobody can read. 

JD lets Cam look his fill, then turns back around and settles himself cross-legged. Looks Cam up and down: surgical scars scrawled across his chest, scars from broken metal scraped against the small of his back, his tailbone, his thighs. The place where three toes used to be. All the places where bone broke skin, where pins put bone back together. JD's eyes don't linger, but they don't shy away, either. He simply catalogues. Assesses. 

"You're not the only one who's got scars," JD finally says. Hint of challenge, hint of impatience, hint of something Cam can't identify. "Just so happens you didn't have yours magically taken away."

And suddenly, just like that, Cam feels ashamed of himself. JD's right; he doesn't have any sort of monopoly on pain. The counselors warned him about this, about lashing out, about letting his identity as a person get subsumed in his identity as a set of limitations. 

JD doesn't let him apologize, though. Cam opens his mouth to say something, and JD's eyes flash a warning and he says, "I'm having a bitch of a time with the extensions to the runtime libraries refusing to cross-compile. You wanna take a look at it now, or later?"

Cam recognizes it for what it is: the acceptance of the apology he was thinking about making. The hot water is helping. Not completely, but enough. "Later's probably better," he says. "Tough to think right now."

JD nods and rocks up to his feet. He doesn't pick up his t-shirt, doesn't seem to even register that he's still half-naked. "You need another Tylox?" he asks. 

Cam can hear it, now. The echo of a thousand other injuries, a hundred rehabilitations, all lurking under the edges of JD's voice. The ones he went through, and the ones he helped with, and the ones he gritted his teeth and bore on his own. And he thinks, suddenly: it's not sympathy. It's empathy.

"Yeah," he says. "Could probably stand to take the edge off."

JD nods and slides out of the bathroom on cat feet. He never makes noise when he's moving around. Cam can hear the soft rattling of pill bottles on the kitchen counter -- there isn't enough room in his bathroom cabinet for all the stuff he's taking -- and JD comes back a minute later with a pill, a glass of water. Cam takes them both. 

"Don't try to get out of here on your own," JD says. "Give me a holler when you're ready." There's no _or else_ lingering beneath; it's simply an order, from a man used to giving orders, from a man used to having those orders obeyed.

Cam closes his eyes and waits for the familiar light-headed rush of the drugs to creep over him. The water's cooling off, but not completely; when it does, he'll let a bit out, run some more hot water in. He always forgets how much a hot soak helps. He can hear JD leaving the bathroom, feels the soft draft of the door being shut behind. Then silence outside. JD's back on the couch, he thinks, head down and concentrating. 

He keeps his eyes shut, and he lets himself drift, and the pain recedes just enough that he doesn't quite register when he slips over the edge into sleep. And he's always been jumpy with people moving around when he's sleeping, even when he's drugged to the eyeballs -- it's one of the endless things that made those months in the hospital such a torment -- but JD's noticed it and has the gift of moving without tripping those alarms. It isn't until JD's hand touches his shoulder, lightly, that Cam struggles back awake and finds that JD's drained the water and is kneeling next to the tub with a towel. 

"C'mon," JD says, and Cam flexes the muscles in his thighs experimentally. The pain's back to bearable levels. He always forgets how bad it can really get until a bad day comes along. Normal days are bad, but they could get so much worse.

JD doesn't move to help him as he gets himself up to standing, but Cam knows that one slip, one stumble, and JD would be right under his arm to take his full weight. It's unobtrusive enough that Cam's actually willing to hold out a hand, grip onto JD's arm, as he steps out. His cane's already leaning against the sink, and he wraps the towel around his hips and reaches for it. 

"Thanks," Cam says. Tentatively, trying for a level of offhandedness to match JD's ease. 

"Welcome," JD says, just as casual, and steps back to let Cam get by. 

He's expecting JD to go back to his work, but no; JD trails along behind him as Cam thump-shuffles into the bedroom. It surprises him. JD's been fastidious about respecting Cam's space. Cam's too hazy to argue, though, and he lets the towel drop and stretches out on the bed. JD clicks off the lights, draws the blinds. Then -- just as Cam's about to tip back over into sleep -- comes back and sits on the edge of the bed. 

"Don't move," JD says, and Cam's trying to figure out how to say _wait what_ when JD's thumbs come to rest in the small of his back, right where the worst of the scar tissue is jutting up against his spine, right where the doctors had to cut and slice and shift things in order for him to have a chance to feel his legs again.

"Wait --" Cam says -- because that's where it's worst, that's where they're watching it, that's where he'll have to always be careful of for the rest of his life and one more fucking accident, one bad impact or injury and that's it, he's back in the fucking chair for good this time.

But -- "I know," JD says, sounding distant, and his thumbs are only stroking over Cam's skin, lightly, feeling out the shape and the placement of everything under Cam's skin with the barest of feather-touches. "Just seeing what I have to avoid. Relax, Mitchell, I know what I'm doing." He sweeps his thumbs up past the worst of the scarring, finds something that makes him stop and poke. Cam hisses. "Breathe," JD says, and then there's a short sharp shock of pain and Cam can feel his muscles shifting.

JD's barely using any weight at all. Cam can tell. It's just that everything in his back is so tight -- the things that don't work anymore, the things that are overcompensating -- that even his physical therapist despairs of it ever unknotting. JD straddles one of Cam's thighs, the insides of his thighs barely glancing Cam's naked skin, and makes a little noise of determination. Cam wants to protest -- _you don't have to do this, I don't want you to do this_ \-- but the first half of that might be true but the second half isn't, and JD's touch is just the right mix of compassion and dispassion. He closes his eyes, and he lets JD's hands move over his back, his shoulders, his hips, his ass. And without even knowing it, without consciously choosing to, he drifts off to sleep.

In the morning, when Cam wakes up and does his stretches, his feet are tingling and they ache, deep-down. But he'll take tingling and ache over numbness any day.

And that's how it is for a while. 

They go through days where they argue about everything, from who used the last of the toothpaste (Cam) to who forgot they were out of orange juice (JD) to who broke the spine of the squirrel book (JD, and Cam's annoyed, because he's bitched at JD's habit of leaving books open spine-up to no end). Cam gets frustrated at himself for how slowly he's re-learning integrated systems engineering and JD gets annoyed at himself every time he re-invents the wheel. The weather changes, changes back -- early fall in Colorado is schizophrenic -- and plays merry hell with Cam's joints. They go through a lot of Pop-Tarts, a lot of coffee, and at least a few days where they communicate entirely by IM because they both know that if they say a word out loud, someone's gonna get shot. 

But there are good days, too. The days when Cam actually forgets that he's crippled, because every time he's about to do something that would remind him, JD's right at his elbow taking care of it instead, always with that studied nonchalance intended to communicate that JD had been just about to get to it. The days when a problem they'd been working on just _clicks_ , and one or both of them winds up awake all night working out subroutines and banging out code. The days when Momma calls, and can hear Cam feeling happy again, feeling useful again. The days when Cam forgets how strange this would look to anyone who wasn't them.

It's odd. JD _touches_ him now -- a hand on his elbow to indicate behind-you, a brush on the shoulder when Cam's sitting down and JD walks behind, a head leaned carefully against Cam's thigh when JD's sitting on the floor and Cam's up in the chair. Cam wouldn't know how to read it, except O'Neill came to visit him in the hospital a few times, alone and with SG-1, and when he'd been there with his team, he'd been the same way with them. It's like touch functions -- for O'Neill, for JD -- as _touchstone_ , as his way of reading the lay of the land and reassuring himself that the people around him are still present and accounted for. 

Cam doesn't mind. Not exactly. But there are a few embarrassing side effects to feeling this much better, both mentally and physically. His physical therapist had explained it to him in clinical terms: the libido shuts down for a while after something that stressful, without even counting the physical issues of nerve impulses mis-firing; give it time, take it slowly, don't feel like you're a failure, don't worry that you'll never be able to get it up again. And on the one hand, it's nice that apparently he's hit another step on his road to recovery, but on the other hand, he's got an Air Force General in the body of a seventeen-year-old computer hacker living on his couch, which would make dating hard enough even if he ever met anyone who wasn't part of his medical care, even if he could find someone who could see past all his body's imperfections. 

And a few times a week, on the nights when Cam's bones are aching the worst -- even when he's trying to hide it the hardest, even when they're arguing the most -- JD follows him wordlessly back into the bedroom, climbs up next to him on the bed, and works his thumbs and his palms into Cam's muscles until Cam almost feels like sobbing from the relief. It's not sexual. It's not erotic. But it feels so damn good to be _touched_.

He knows better. He _does_ ; from one angle, JD is seventeen, _seven-fucking-teen_ , and Cam is thirty-six. From the other angle, JD is -- fifty-two? Fifty-three? -- and Cam knows goddamn well what kind of world Jack O'Neill grew up in, with what kinds of attitudes and values. Untouchable from both ends. Cam's not a pervert. He's always looked at men and women with an equal eye, but teenage boys don't turn him on. But JD's so beautiful it makes Cam's chest ache, and it's not the body; it's the way JD wears it.

So he grits his teeth and tries to ignore it. It's just that his world is so narrow these days, he tells himself; JD's the only person he sees regularly, and they're all up in each other's space all the time. But the next time they're on fire with the code, swapping lines back and forth in IM, Cam is sitting on one end of the couch, and JD -- restless, energized -- stretches out the couch's length, puts the laptop on his chest, and puts his head in Cam's lap. Carelessly, affectionately. And Cam suddenly has to be up and away before he does something he'll regret for a long damn time.

He gets himself out from under JD, thumps his way into the kitchen. "You want a beer?" he calls over his shoulder. Simple, casual.

He can hear JD cursing under his breath from the living room. It's weird; Cam would swear he was angry with himself. "Yeah, sure," JD says. 

When Cam comes back out, JD's sitting up again, hugging the other arm of the couch from where Cam was sitting. He's got one of Momma's hand-knit afghans slung around his shoulders, covering up all his skin and his tattoos. Neither one of them much bothers hiding their scars these days.

"Here," Cam says, and passes over one of the bottles of beer.

"Thanks," JD says. "Sorry. Forgot you weren't --"

It's the most awkward thing Cam's ever heard come out of his mouth, and there's a click inside Cam's head as a few things rearrange themselves. All of a sudden, Cam realizes -- for the first time in a really long time -- just how fucking much it must _suck_ for JD to have lost everything. House. Home. Job. Friends. Family.

Lover?

And Cam's been a selfish, self-absorbed asshole for the past three months, but the revelation slaps him upside the head like Momma with a wooden spoon, and it must show on his face, because JD's expression locks down, goes blank and distant. 

"No," Cam says, quickly, before JD can retreat entirely. "Which one of them was it?" Because that's it, that's got to be it. 

"Back off," JD warns. He looks down at his computer screen. The subject of his former life -- of either of their former lives, but particularly his, _O'Neill's_ \-- has always been off limits. Cam knows this. 

He sits down on the couch again. Close enough to JD to be within the sphere of 'personal bubble' he's projecting, but then again, JD's jaw is twitching like right now he has a personal bubble the size of the entire apartment. "It's okay, you know," Cam says. "What was it you threw at me a couple of months ago? I'm not the only one who has problems? Goes both ways." 

"You have no fucking _idea_ ," JD snarls, and then -- before Cam can say anything, do anything -- he's up off the couch and pulling on a shirt, a jacket, and slamming out the door. Cam can hear his footsteps thudding down the stairs, two at a time. Even if Cam wanted to follow, he couldn't.

Cam sits on the couch for a minute, thinking about new lives, about starting over. Then he plugs the power cord back into JD's laptop, so JD doesn't come back (if JD comes back) to find the battery completely drained, closes the lid of his own laptop and rests it on the table, and then shuffles off to his bedroom. The least he can do is give JD the illusion of space when he returns.

He wakes up in the middle of the night with a hand over his mouth and a lean, hard body pressed up against his back. The panic starts to spread before he gets a hold of it. He already knows his subconscious thinks of JD as no threat. He just doesn't know why JD's _here_.

"All of them," JD says, in his ear, soft and low. It takes Cam a minute to remember; he'd asked JD a question, hours before. And apparently JD can only answer it in the middle of the night, in the dark. "In one way or another. But the one you're talking about, that was Daniel. Came out of nowhere. Broadsided me. And he's completely fucking straight."

Cam wants to say something -- anything, he's not sure what, but it's the kind of pause you fill with some meaningless expression of sympathy. JD's still got his hand over Cam's mouth, though. He can't even say it with his face, because he's on his side and JD's behind him.

JD's behind him, and he's still talking, in a rough-edged voice that sounds far older, far calmer, than it should. "And he died a few times, and I died a few times -- I think technically I win, if you count the tortured-to-death-and-revived thing, which I _do_ , let me tell you -- and lots of other things happened that are past your security clearance, and then I woke up one morning as _me_ instead of _him_ and he went off to live our old life. I spent a few weeks mad enough to spit bullets, and then I woke up one morning and realized I didn't envy the poor bastard for having to deal with that mess. That _he_ could deal with it for us. That the downside to all of this was that I didn't get to have his life anymore, but the upside was that he didn't get to have mine. That I got a do-over, and I didn't have to hold to old choices. So I play with cool toys, and I fuck men, and I'm going to make us rich, and someday, way down the line, I'm going to call _him_ up and tell him how it would have gone for us if we'd turned left instead of right and thank him for taking all the weight so I didn't have to, because I know damn well he'll never understand what kind of a favor he did me."

JD's fingers stroke Cam's cheek. Cam can barely breathe. "But you don't get to ask about it," JD says. Still calm. Still quiet. "You weren't there. You might have heard about it, you might have read the reports, you might know on paper what it was like. But you weren't there. You came in at the end, and you pulled off a miracle, and you got dealt a shitty hand for your sins and your reward and they should have done better by you. But you'll never know the reality of it. So you don't get to ask. Maybe someday I'll tell you. But you don't get to ask. You got it?"

Cam nods, in the dark, against his pillow. He's hyper-conscious of JD's breath in his ear, the beating of JD's heart against his back, the way JD's legs are tangled with his. JD smells like soap and good clean sweat. He must have been running.

"Okay," JD says. And then -- Cam's heart stops -- dips his head to rest his lips against the curve of Cam's neck, just behind the ear. "Now go back to fucking sleep."

And JD lets his hand fall from Cam's mouth, drapes it over Cam's side, and -- apparently between one heartbeat and the next -- falls asleep. 

JD doesn't go back to sleeping on the couch after that. They don't talk about it -- Cam's not sure of the extent of JD's conversational prohibitions, and JD apparently doesn't see the need to bring it up. He just moves into Cam's bed the same way he moved into Cam's apartment, the same way he moved into Cam's life, and it's barely another week before Cam wakes up in the morning with JD sitting cross-legged between his knees and stroking his thighs. JD raises an eyebrow, and Cam only wonders if it's pity or desire once before JD's mouth closes over his dick.

And from there, it's like a door's been unlocked, like Cam found the code for the secret bonus level of the video game of his life, because he should have known that JD would be driven and inventive and seemingly inexhaustable. They fight like they can't stand each other over code, over systems, and then JD pushes Cam back against the couch and blows him stupid. They work for hours, straight through meals, and then JD kneels up on the couch and takes Cam's laptop away, takes Cam's hand and closes it over his own dick, and they jerk each other off, all awkward angles and sweaty fumbling. They stretch out in bed and Cam touches everything he can reach, pulls on JD's nipples and leaves marks on his throat, and JD leans and bends so Cam can get his mouth on JD's dick without hurting.

Sometimes he forgets, but JD never does. JD is always careful. There's a night when Cam rolls them over so he's bearing JD down into the mattress, his dick nudging up at that perfect valley behind JD's balls, and JD's hips are snapping up and up and up in time with his muttered epithets. It's good, it's _more_ than good, and they haven't talked about it -- any of it -- but JD groans and spreads his legs wide, brings his knees up, and yeah, like that, Cam _wants_. He goes to haul himself up to his knees, get the condoms and the lube he's started keeping in the bedside table in anticipation of someday, and then he's down over JD's hip, banging a fist against the sheets, trying to breathe through the pain. 

"Dammit," he says, "God damn it," but JD just squirms out from under him, spreads him out on his back and does _something_ with his spine and his hips, liquid shimmy, rubbing his ass along Cam's dick, and the pain's forgotten. JD's the one who gets the condoms and the lube, and JD's the one who gets his own fingers wet and slippery, and JD lowers himself onto Cam's dick by painstaking millimeters until Cam's eyes are starting to cross. 

_You don't have to take it slow for me,_ he's about to say, until he notices the frown of concentration right in the center of JD's forehead. "Slow," JD grits out, "never done this before --" and Cam realizes he doesn't just mean in _this_ body, he means at all. But then JD's gripping Cam's hips with his thighs, and JD is rocking himself steadily back and forth, and Cam's got his hand on JD's dick and they're both trying like hell not to make enough noise so the restaurant customers downstairs can hear them. 

September turns to October. JD pronounces them three weeks from code-complete. Cam flies to Washington, puts on a suit and tie, and spends an hour showing PowerPoint slides to the third assistant underling of the Secretary of the Navy. He doesn't even think about detouring over to E ring, to what's never publicly called Homeworld; if it had still been Hammond there, he might have, but O'Neill's a two-star now, and that would be more weird than Cam's brain could handle. He comes home with a big enough check to justify all the hell they've been putting themselves through and the promise of more where that came from, and he comes home to code freeze and JD straddling him on the couch and wordlessly apologizing for making Cam fly under someone else's hands.

Momma starts making noises about Cam bringing his partner home for Thanksgiving, and she means business partner, but Cam hears it with a capital P. JD seems to delight in getting dirty looks from people by making out in public. Cam starts watching the classifieds for a bigger place, a nicer place, and he knows JD catches him doing it, but JD doesn't say anything. Their argument about the GUI ends with Cam throwing a couch pillow at JD and JD threatening to set Cam's cane on fire. Cam wins, and tries to be gracious in victory. 

JD catches Cam laughing one lazy Sunday afternoon, and he pushes himself up from where he's draped over Cam's chest -- mindful of where he puts his weight, always sure he's not leaning on something he shouldn't -- and asks, "Hmm?"

"Nothing," Cam says, tracing the arch and whorl of ink over JD's shoulder. "Just thinking that I've never had a thing where _both_ people could say they were robbing the cradle before."

For a minute he worries he's gone too far, but then JD is laughing, and JD grinds his hips against Cam's and Cam's dick decides that's enough philosophizing. Apparently he's okay with being a pervert.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thanksgiving with the family is rough when your lover looks like he's still in high school.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Originally [posted](https://synecdochic.dreamwidth.org/138330.html) 2007-07-08.)

## 

two

Thanksgiving. 

It sneaks up on them; they're working to deadline now. Cam's up to his eyeballs in load test simulations and JD's crunching his way through bugfix after bugfix and they're both dreading the mid-December user acceptance test and code review they've got scheduled with the Navy geeks. It isn't until Momma asks Cam on their weekly call whether he'll need one bedroom or two that Cam realizes they're flying out on Wednesday. "One," he says, without really thinking about it, and Momma takes it in stride, because she believes all her children and nieces and nephews and assorted other kin can tend their own business about who they're sleeping with, and she says she knows full well that people will get up to whatever they'll get up to, whether under her roof or not. And Cam hangs up the phone and puts his head in his hands, because he knew this was coming -- booked plane tickets himself, even -- but knowing something's coming and being ready to face it are two different things.

There's really no way to prepare someone for a holiday with the Mitchell family, Cam knows, except to throw them straight into the middle of the ocean and hope they learn to swim before they drown. He used to enjoy watching it. Standard operating procedure is to issue one warning and then it's sink-or-swim time, and every year at least one of the cousins or nieces or nephews can be seen patiently trying to lure an overwhelmed significant other out of the hiding spot and back into the fray. It's a fun game; it's a family tradition.

Somehow he doesn't think it's going to be as much fun this year.

"It's not that I'm ashamed," he says to JD, in the middle of the night, in the darkness of their bedroom. "It's that --"

"I know," JD says against Cam's hair, and tightens his hold. "I know."

They talk, now, in fits and starts, offering up little scraps of past lives as context and clarification. He's pretty sure he knows more about JD, about Jack O'Neill, than any other person in this galaxy. Pretty sure, because Daniel Jackson is on Atlantis and doesn't look like he's ever coming back. But talking doesn't come naturally to JD -- "never will," he'd said once; "too many years of the other way around" -- and even though (Cam knows, because JD told him) his first resolution for his new life had been to throw out his old ways of doing a lot of things, anything resembling JD facing his emotions takes place with the lights out.

It's not natural for Cam; he comes from a kin-group who wear their hearts on their sleeves. But it's a small enough concession to make. Their life together is slowly evolving into a series of working compromises, and they may get them wrong more often than not, but they're learning.

JD has his arm draped over Cam's side, spooned up behind him, holding on so fiercely Cam thinks he might be leaving bruises. Cam puts his hand over JD's hand on his chest and squeezes. "I want you to know," he says. "I need you to know. I don't care if they don't get it."

"You let me handle it," JD says. And Cam's used to hearing command-voice, control-voice, out of JD by now. He's used to looking past the packaging and seeing the person behind it. But it's still a shock when -- every now and then -- JD says or does something that reminds Cam, once again, that the man he's sharing his bed and his life with has been a leader of men for almost the entire length of time Cam's been alive. 

They're on the crack-of-dawn flight out of Denver on Wednesday morning, which puts them into Charlotte before noon, even with timezones. JD drives the rental car. Cam _can_ drive a non-refitted car -- if it's an automatic, if it's not a bad day, if he has to -- but JD won't hear of it. JD can drive Cam's car with its hand controls for gas and brake as easily as he can drive anything with an engine, but he lets Cam take the wheel if they're out and about in Colorado Springs. Cam appreciates that fact enough that he doesn't protest when JD puts his foot down at the rental counter, even if the surcharge for an underage driver is nearly as much again as the cost of the rental and they're still going to be on a tight budget until at least another contract comes in.

Cam spends the entire length of the drive out to Black Mountain filling up the SUV with nervous chatter. Family history, Who's Who, tips on what to say and what not to say. "Mitchell," JD finally says, amused. Cam takes a deep breath to cut him off, and then the surreality of JD never bothering with his first name makes him want to crack up. JD tips him a quick look, tinged with a grin. "I told you. I've got it covered. You relax."

Cam hushes, but he doesn't relax. JD might have spent seven years dealing with alien cultures so varied that Cam knows he'll never even have a glimmer of a clue about the breadth of them, but JD's never seen the Mitchells at a holiday, and Cam's willing to bet money they're weirder.

Still, it's nice to be home again. Momma's expecting them, so as soon as the car pulls up in the driveway, she's out on the porch like a bullet. What with one thing and another, it's been a good two years -- no, two and a half -- since Cam's been back; they've built out the house again. Looks like another two, three bedrooms. He occupies himself with getting himself plus the cane out of the car; JD's in charge of their gear. Momma doesn't come on down to help -- she knows better than to get in the way -- but Cam can feel her eyes on the whole process, already assessing JD.

He stumbles a little -- the "driveway" is really more of a parking lot, gravel-covered, designed so it can be expanded if necessary if they have more cars, long-term, than the driveway can support, and gravel's a bitch to try to walk on. JD's at his elbow before he even finishes righting himself. Doesn't try to catch him -- JD never has; he knows without having to be told that Cam's sense of balance might be a bit shaky from time to time, but "help" is more of a hindrance. JD's the only person Cam's ever seen who doesn't instinctively grab at him to help keep him upright and wind up knocking him over. JD just puts himself within Cam's reach, holds out an arm, and lets Cam decide whether or not he needs to grab it. Momma doesn't miss that, either, Cam knows.

"You must be JD," Momma says, when they make their way up to the porch. It's got a ramp, not steps, and the railing's sturdy enough that Cam doesn't worry about leaning his weight on it. The whole house is full of little touches like that, has been just about as long as Cam can remember.

Next to Cam, JD straightens up and looks Momma directly in the eye. "Yes ma'am," he says, and holds out a hand. "JD Nielson. Pleased to meet you. Cam's told me so much about you."

Cam's holding his breath. Momma makes up her mind about someone in the first thirty seconds, usually, and Momma sets the tone for the whole damn family. But JD's got her eyes, and as Cam watches, he sees JD do something he doesn't often (ever) do: he lets his face shift, his balance re-adjust, and for nothing more than the briefest flash of a second, presents himself as Jack O'Neill wearing JD's skin.

And then it's gone, and JD is smiling and saying something about how grateful he is for the invitation, and Momma's looking at him with fascination but she's holding up her side of the ritual conversational volley without a problem. Cam knows they could spend upwards of fifteen minutes on the small talk before they even get through the front door -- despite the chaos Cam can already hear starting inside -- and his legs ache like someone's pushed razors through them; air travel leaves him miserable. He puts two fingers on JD's elbow to interrupt him and says, "Momma, I'm beat, and I wanna lie down for a few; where are you putting us?" 

Momma gives him a look, and oh, yeah, there's the trouble he's been expecting; he's in the doghouse. Momma works out the sleeping arrangements for holidays a week or so in advance, when all the stragglers have reported in as to how many guests they're bringing. But Cam never found a way to tell her his partner looks like he hasn't even graduated high school yet, and Momma might be brilliant at taking things in stride, but he knows full well this crosses one of her lines.

But all she says is, "You and JD are in the peach bedroom, honey. I don't have anybody in with you right now, since I knew you'd be like to beat after flying. You need me to get any of the cousins to help you with your stuff?"

JD shakes his head. "Thank you, ma'am, but no," he says, then turns to Cam. "After you."

The peach bedroom is the furthest you can possibly get from the door and still be in the same zip code, but it's on the ground floor at least; Momma knows better than to put him up a flight of stairs, which is why he's not in his old bedroom. They make it back there without running into anyone, which is a minor miracle. Cam lets JD drop their shared duffel on the floor while he stretches out on the bed and feels everything in his back start to relax with the weight taken off of it. 

"You want me to rub anything?" JD asks, coming to stand at the side of the bed. He's back to being just JD again. There's a peculiar kind of cognitive dissonance involved; Cam knows full well who, _what_ JD is, and he never forgets it, but JD has a way of carrying himself that makes it settle into nothing more than background knowledge. He's got the body language of a man in his fifties, but he's tempered it with something wholly unique, something Cam can't ever put a finger on, enough to keep from sticking out like a sore thumb. Cam's never met anyone with more conscious control over how he presents himself. He wonders why JD let it drop to show Momma; he knows better than to think it was an accident.

"No, I'm okay," Cam says. He shut the door behind him, but a shut door in this house doesn't mean much during the day; knock-and-open-immediately is a family habit, and he doesn't think it'd go over well for someone to find JD kneeling over him. 

JD touches his cheek, a light affectionate gesture. "Liar," he says. JD's grown expert at reading the lines around Cam's eyes, the set of his mouth; JD can gauge the amount of pain he's in at any given moment down to the inch. "Take something, at least?"

"I don't want to abandon you to the family," Cam says. "Just gimme five minutes."

But JD's shaking his head already, turning away to open up their gear and riffle through it. "Told you," he says, over his shoulder. "I'll be fine. Here." 

He fishes out the army of prescription bottles, pops each in turn and presents Cam a handful of pills and the leftover bottle of water they brought in from the car. "I'll wake you up in an hour or two," JD says. "I can make myself useful until then."

Cam knows better than to argue when JD's got that note of finality in his voice, so he takes the drugs (muscle relaxants, painkillers, anti-inflammatories, something for the neuropathic pain; he'll be popping pills until the day he dies) and swallows them down. "You come get me if you need me," he says.

JD's amused. "I remember the story," he says. "You worry too much, Mitchell. Your momma's no match for Hammond in a bad mood, and I always dealt with him just fine." 

They've built a network of cover story, enough to answer just about any question that might come up: JD is twenty (it's about as far as they thought they could push it), child prodigy, high school graduate at sixteen, a friend of the daughter of one of Cam's old service buddies. Orphaned at an early age, ward of the state until he petitioned for emancipated-minor status, and has been working in the dot-com industry in lieu of college ever since. JD supplied most of the details; Cam's got a sneaking suspicion he's drawing from the life experience of someone he knew somewhere, but he doesn't press further. It papers over the worst of the incongruities.

The drugs won't kick in for another ten, fifteen minutes, but Cam's already exhausted -- it's been a long fucking day, and it's not even close to being over yet, and dealing with his family, however much he loves them, is draining. And just being horizontal has brought the exhaustion he was holding off crashing down on him, so he closes his eyes. "You come get me if you need me," he repeats. It's not that he thinks JD can't take care of himself; it's that it's rude to bring someone as your guest and then go off to take a nap while you throw him to the wolves.

"I will," JD says. The bed dips underneath his weight; he sits next to Cam, runs his fingers through Cam's hair. Feels damn good. "Sleep," JD says, low and soothing, and Cam does.

When he wakes up, the room's in shadow, though not completely dark yet. He can hear the sounds of a small riot going on outside his door, which pretty much is par for the course around here even when they're _not_ full up for the holidays. The tail end of a drug hangover is nibbling at the edges of his consciousness, but he's used to that, and he'll admit that JD was right; the sleep did him a world of good.

He's a little afraid of what he might find going on out there, but there's no point in putting it off, so he gets himself in order, grabs his cane, and heads on out. There's a few places he can look. The kids (cousins, nieces, nephews, a byzantine conglomeration of kinship ties; nobody ever bothers tracking exact relationships in this family except Momma, and Cam's used to being Uncle Cam to anyone younger than he is no matter what the ties) are probably out in the backyard, running up and down, with one or two adults to make sure that nobody falls into the creek. The men are always in the den, door shut behind them, sports on the TV being ignored in favor of whatever topic of conversation is hottest; the old women keep a lazy eye on the kids from the back porch, knitting in hand. And then, of course, there's the kitchen, which is the true center of any family event.

Cam tries the kitchen first, because he knows that's where Momma will be, and he's pretty sure Momma's fixing to give him a piece of her mind. Easier all around if he gets it over with quickly. But he stops just outside the kitchen doorway, because he can hear JD's very best happy/amused laugh cutting through all the noise and chatter. Aunt Lorena's saying something about college -- her oldest just started at Duke in the fall, Cam remembers -- and Uncle Fred is complaining about the mess George Lucas made of the new Star Wars movies, and Cam's cousin Stella sounds like she's halfway through a rant about her latest idiot CO (who, from what Cam's had passed on to him secondhand, deserves the title of idiot and then some). 

He can parse out the threads of conversation automatically -- to be a Mitchell is to be able to listen for four conversations while carrying on a fifth -- but he's a little surprised to find, when he takes a deep breath and heads on in, that JD is right in the thick of it, standing at the table with an apron tossed over his long-sleeved black t-shirt to keep it clean, peeler in hand and a mound of naked potatoes elbow-high next to him. He's got his head turned away from the door, saying something over his shoulder to Stella at the counter -- some suggestion for how to deal with the idiot Major, and knowing JD, it'll be a good one. He doesn't see Cam come in. 

Momma, though, is getting something out of the pantry, and she's turned to face the door; she's across the room from him, but that doesn't matter. Cam watches her eyebrows go up (that's Momma's we-have-to-talk-young-man face, always has been), and then she uses her chin to gesture at JD. Or maybe at the potatoes. Cam takes a deep breath, and then makes his way over to the table. There's an unclaimed peeler, and he picks it up.

"Hey," JD says, leaning back against him without having to look to see who it is. JD always knows when Cam's in touching distance. He reaches out with one foot to snag one of the chairs that have been pushed to the side, dragging it over to the table so Cam can sit down while he's being put to work. 

Cam takes another deep breath. "Hey," he says, and -- onlookers be damned -- snakes an arm around JD's waist for a quick squeeze before sitting down. JD passes him a potato. 

Stella says "Cam, you gotta hear this one," and JD interrupts Uncle Al (who teaches archaeology down at U.T. Austin, and who stages a re-enactment of the siege of Dapur, complete with ladders, chariots, and archers, in the stadium once every four years) to make a multi-layered pun about the hills of Galilee that has Uncle Al snorting into the beer he just claimed from the fridge, and Cindy Lou, Cam's sister-in-law, comes storming in with the baby, who's fussing up a storm, to pull a teething ring out of the freezer. Aunt Annabeth inquires about Cam's health -- not just for form's sake; Annabeth's husband Stephen is just back from Iraq, minus a right foot from a bad detonation at the wrong time, and Annabeth has been keeping track of Cam's progress through Momma, because she knows Stephen's got good odds of running through the same problems. 

JD puts down the peeler and takes the baby from Cindy, not missing a beat in his defense of Anakin Skywalker, and Lucy stops screaming the minute JD gets his hands on her, blinking up at him with wide blue eyes. "Hush, you, life's not that bad," JD says straight to her, with none of the cooing or fussing people use for babies when they don't know what to do with them. JD holds her like an expert. Cam knows O'Neill had a son, knows it ended in disaster, not much more; it took JD a long time to even get out those few bare bones. But there's no old pain in JD's eyes, just ease.

"Those potatoes won't peel themselves, Cameron," Momma says on her way back to the sink. Well, the full name is a bad sign, but at least it wasn't "Cameron Everett", because the invocation of the Holy Middle Name always means trouble. Cam sets to peeling potatoes, and JD sticks a finger into Lucy's mouth to rub her gums, and people come in and people go out and yeah, it's nice to be back home.

Thanksgiving Eve supper is always takeout pizza, because the ovens (two of them; they aren't needed more than a few times a year, but when they're needed, they're _needed_ ) are full. Cam fields the questions about how he's doing, lets JD handle the ones about why Colorado and what exactly it is they _do_ for a living and how they met and what their future plans are. He spends half the meal expecting _someone_ to ask him when he's planning on making an honest man out of JD, and that's a surprise. He's always known that his family didn't have a lick of prejudice, not after the commitment ceremony they threw for Susie Mae and her wife Maria, but Susie Mae and Maria are the same age. Then again, if JD had been a girl, Cam would have just been following in the footsteps of Uncle George. Of course, he's not too sure if he _likes_ the thought of anyone considering him even remotely like Uncle George.

After supper, when the teenagers have retreated to the living room with the Playstation and Gran Turismo 4 and the men have closed the door of the den so they can smoke the cigars and cigarettes the women pretend they don't know about, Momma gets Cam's elbow in a lock-grip and announces to nobody in particular that Cam is going to help her take the pizza boxes out to the trash now. And her hands are empty while she's steering him out onto the front porch, and Cam's exempt from trash duty from now until the end of time so long as he's still not walking steady, but everybody knows it for a polite fiction anyway.

Momma gets him down onto the front porch swing and sits down next to him. Cam's expecting a lecture, but all she does is give him a look. "You wanna tell me what that boy's story is, Cameron?" she asks.

Cam winces. "That boy" is somewhere halfway up the scale of possible call-names. Could be a good sign, could be a bad one. He opens his mouth to give her the story they decided on, and the look turns into a Look. "Without lying to me," she finishes, and Cam closes his mouth again, because he's never been comfortable with lying to his momma to begin with, and she can always tell. But there is no way on God's green earth that he can tell her the truth.

"It's complicated, Momma," he finally settles on. 

She purses her lips. "Couldn't see how not," she says. "He's not what he says he is."

No. No, he's not. And Momma's people-sense is better than anyone Cam's ever met -- it's a given in the family that if you're not sure of someone, you bring them home and put them to the Momma test -- but Cam knows damn well that if JD had wanted, she would have looked at him and seen exactly what JD was pretending to be. He's not exactly sure why JD didn't. 

And JD's instincts for this sort of thing are usually right, but Cam doesn't know what he's got planned, and he knows exactly the extent of what he can't say about the situation -- which is to say, any of it -- and his momma's sitting there and waiting for him to say _something_. And maybe Momma sees the misery in his eyes, because she pats him on the thigh. "Doesn't mean I don't like him," she says. "I just fret about you."

That, at least, he can answer without lying. "I'm all right, Momma. Better'n I was."

"Any fool can see _that_ ," she says, sharply. To anyone else it would sound dismissive; Cam hears the relief, and knows that Momma's cutting JD a whole hell of a lot of slack, just for the improvement she's seeing in Cam. "But I know you know how bad this looks."

_We raised you better than that_ is lurking around the edges, and Cam sighs. "I know," he says. "Momma, you gotta believe me, I know. I wish I could tell you more, I really do, but I can't."

Her eyes narrow. "Can't? Or won't?"

"Can't," he says, and oh _hell_ , that's the traditional "it's classified" tone of voice coming out of his own mouth. They're a military family through and through, no matter how many of them in any generation march to the beat of a different drummer; there have been Mitchells and Chandlers and Hutchens and Brewers in every single armed conflict as far back as they can trace it. With a father and a husband and two sons in the armed forces, there's no chance Momma won't recognize it. 

"Now isn't that interesting," Momma says, and double hell, that's her putting-things-together tone. He knows neither of his parents bought the cover story for his accident, not from the very first minute. She never asked, never even hinted at a question, but now he can see her adding things up. 

There's gotta be something Cam can do to save this. "You'll have to ask him," he says; "it's not my place to --"

"You hush," she says, and turns around a little more fully, so that she's facing him. "You look me in the eye, Cameron Everett Mitchell --" and there's the middle name; he's in trouble now -- "and you tell me that you aren't up to something you have to be ashamed of."

There's so much lurking underneath her words, and Cam can read every inch of it. He swallows heavily and meets her gaze. "No ma'am," he says. "I'm not."

She keeps him on the hook for a good long minute before she nods. "I'll hold you to that, then," she says, "and I'll let you keep your business. For now. Now you get in there and tell that poor boy he doesn't have to work so hard to impress us."

"That poor boy" is one step up from "that boy", at least. He can still feel her disapproval, though, and it makes his heart hurt. He wants to explain that it's not JD looking to impress anyone, it's just the way he is, but there's no way he can get into _that_ without getting into the fact that JD was actually raised fifty years ago, Momma's opinions on the ability of people who aren't family (and some of the ones who are) to raise children right and proper being legendary. So he doesn't say anything but "yes ma'am" -- safer to go for the manners in a situation like this -- and gets himself back inside. 

JD's sitting out on the back porch with the women; Great-Aunt Suzette has put a set of knitting needles in his hands, and it makes Cam grin to see JD -- who Cam has personally seen fix things with his own two hands things that other people would swear were destined for the junk-heap -- hopelessly struggling to pick up a dropped stitch that's laddered down six rows of nice and boring garter. Cam leans his cane against his hip, relieves JD of the needles, and studies the mess. Aunt Suzette clicks her tongue. "A boy's gotta learn to fix up his own mistakes," she says, to nobody in particular.

"Didn't know you knit," JD says, twisting so he can look up at Cam.

"Idle hands are the Devil's work," Cam says, doing his best impression of Gran'ma -- God rest her -- and trying to figure out what the _fuck_ JD managed to do. He's been knitting since he was six -- Gran'ma had Notions; all the Mitchell children got lessons. Knitting and woodwork and electric and plumbing and auto mechanics and cooking and baking -- which are two distinctly different things; how to get stains out of anything and how to garden a plot of land and how to shoot a gun and hit at what you're aiming at and nothing more, all of them boy and girl alike. Gran'ma was a firm believer in self-sufficiency. 

Cam's one of the few of his generation who kept up knitting. He'd grown up with women; Momma and Gran'ma, Aunt Aggie and Aunt Emma and Aunt Sally. Households combine and shift and pack up and move in the family based on who's got newborns and who's overseas, and Gran'ma was always the matriarch undisputed, the one everyone came home to. Momma's inherited the title now; Daddy married strong. Cam had grown up knowing that there are things women only talk about when they've got needles to hand, and if he kept himself small and quiet and sat there with his hands busy, he could sit to listen. It's how he learned the ways of the world, and it's served him well over the years. It's a soothing hobby, too. Kept him from going crazy through more than one tour, and anyone who gave him shit usually shut up after getting their first pair of hand-knit socks. 

He hasn't done any knitting since the accident; he's a little startled to realize he misses it. Gran'ma taught anyone who didn't outrun her, but Cam found he had a special gift for it, a fact that's earned him no small amount of ribbing from various and sundry. Still, he's the one Gran'ma passed her collection of needles and notions to. They're still up in his old bedroom; he'd intended to send for them once he was done with being stationed from here to hell and gone. Maybe he'll take them with him now.

"Here, sit," JD says, and gets out of the chair. (Hand-carved wood; Cam's grandpa was a master carpenter, passed his skill on down the line. There isn't a store-bought piece of furniture anywhere in the family's houses.) Cam settles himself down, fishes a crochet hook out of Aunt Emma's knit-bag, and squints at the mess of stitches. JD slides down to sit at Cam's feet; the porch chairs are all full. He puts a hand around Cam's ankle and digs his fingertips right into the knot at the back of Cam's calf. 

Cam tries to keep his eyes from rolling back in his head. He finds the dropped stitch, ladders it up partway, realizes JD has inadvertently reinvented the "knit front  & back" stitch, and shakes his head. "This is a mess," he informs JD, who laughs.

"Rip it out," JD says, carelessly. "Show me again."

Cam undoes the stitches, casts on a row of twenty. Feels good in his hands; it's been a while since he _made_ something. He indulges the impulse, lets his fingers fly through one row, another. JD watches. There's no way he can figure out what Cam's doing: not from his angle, not with Cam's speed. Doesn't matter. Cam doesn't think JD's interested in learning how to knit, not any more than his perpetual interest in learning anything presented to him. Someone must have mentioned Cam's knitting to him, and JD realized Cam would need a nudge to get back to it, and worked out the easiest way to provide that nudge without getting Cam's back up.

It would be annoying -- the way JD can read him like that, the way JD can manipulate him like that -- if it weren't so damn sweet all the time. "Pain in my ass," Cam mutters under his breath, fingers clicking the needles against each other, Gran'ma's old rhyme, _in through the front door, round the back, peek through the window, off jumps Jack_. 

His fingers shuffle the stitches along the needles without him having to tell them. JD grins, bright and unrepentant. "Yup," he says, and bounds easily to his feet. "You're welcome." He leans over, tips Cam's chin up with two fingers, kisses him quick but thorough. "I'll be inside in the den."

"Poker game'll be starting soon," Cam says. "Come 'n get me when it does."

JD's grin turns sharkish. He's a brilliant poker player; Cam's seen him ride jack-high and force Cam to fold a pair of queens, fold aces over fours somehow knowing Cam was betting aces over eights. The family game flips from five-card stud to hold 'em to Omaha, depends on who starts it. Literally penny-ante, but they play with chips anyway, because nobody wants five hundred pennies kicking around their pockets. Cam doesn't usually play, but he knows JD will want to, and if Cam's there, nobody will "suggest" JD might feel more comfortable with the cousins in the living room. 

And sure enough, JD wins just enough to establish that he knows what he's doing and loses just enough to keep from there being sore feelings. Cam knows he's throwing it; he's picked up on just enough of JD's tells to catch when JD folds hands he should have bet out. Cam thinks his daddy might be able to tell, too; his daddy's watching JD like a hawk, and his daddy's good at reading people like JD's good at reading people. But he can't tell what his father's thinking, good or bad.

The talk is about the war. Seems like half the family's overseas right now or just come back, and they're graduating one each from West Point and Annapolis this spring. Cam keeps his mouth shut. He did his time serving his country, and he did his time serving his planet, and knowing what's out there -- even as little as he does; he knows better than to think he knows everything -- makes him ache deep in his heart that he can't see there being peace on Earth anytime soon so they can face the war out there united. They told him when they brought him into the Snakeskinners (the official name of the 302 wing was Project Heliotrope; nobody ever used it) that the greatest danger he'd face wouldn't be out there; it'd be the way his perspective changed about back home. None of Cam's squad had believed them until it had started happening.

JD catches Cam's eye while Great-Uncle George (the other one; his war was World War Two, staff sergeant in the Pacific theater, and he taught Cam everything there was to know about how to keep a unit running right) is warming up to full throttle. Uncle George doesn't approve of war, but he disapproves in the way that only people who've lived it can; he's got no patience for opinions coming from people who don't know how to face costs in practice, not only in theory. Cam can see JD's itching to jump in, but JD doesn't say anything, just bends his head down over his cards. It's tough for Cam; he can only imagine how bad it must be for JD. Cam put in fifteen years, give or take. JD put in thirty, and he didn't choose to walk away.

It's not often that someone gets dragged into conversation without putting himself forward, but JD is new, and they don't have his measure yet, and they still think he's what he appears to be. And Uncle Bayliss gets going on how the armed forces have been going downhill ever since Vietnam turned service from a matter of honor to a matter of shame -- a topic upon which he'll discourse until the cows come home -- until Cam's daddy stirs, looks to JD, and says, "you've been awfully quiet, JD, what do you think?"

Cam wants to jump in, wants to save JD from the pitfalls he sees lurking, and he knows that he can't. If he does, if he steps in and steers the conversation away, it's going to look like exactly what they've been doing their best to avoid: an older man, crippled, exiled from everything he ever knew, latching on to a boy and controlling everything down to the opinions he's supposed to have. So he bites his tongue, and he prays to God, and he should have had more faith, because JD looks up and meets Daddy's eyes like the old soldiers they both are.

"I think that the people who reject 'my country right or wrong' forget about the other half of it," JD says. "The part about 'if right, to be kept right; if wrong, to be set right'." And Cam realizes right there that for as much as he knows JD, for as much as they've talked and fought and argued and learned each other, there are some things he's never going to understand -- never going to be _able_ to understand -- because there are things JD lived through that he'll never say a word about.

They talk about Vice President Kinsey's resignation (JD's smirking a little; Cam makes note to ask why later) and President Hayes' foreign policy ("about time we got a man with a lick of sense in office," Uncle Bayliss says, which is as close as anyone in the family ever gets to revealing who they voted for; Gran'ma apparently instituted that rule back during the '64 election when Uncle Al and Uncle Jock nearly came to pistols at dawn, and it's held fast ever since) and slowly, bit by bit, Cam starts to relax. Nobody's questioned the fact that JD catches all their references, makes a few of his own. Nobody's called him "kid" in a few hours. Nobody's looked at Cam like he's crazy for bringing JD here.

"I like your family," JD says, when they've retreated back to the bedroom and settled in for the night. It's a little wistful, a little sad. Cam hears it for what's lurking underneath: _I miss mine_.

He rolls over and gets face-to-face, which they don't often do. JD likes tucking in behind him, wrapping his arm over Cam's chest and resting his hand against Cam's heartbeat. New moon, and it's dark as sin outside and in, and Cam can only see the shadowy outlines of JD's face. Doesn't matter. He puts his hand against JD's cheek, brushes his thumb along the cheekbone. 

"I got you now," he says, careful not to stress any one word more than another. 

"Yeah," JD says, quiet in the darkness. Cam can feel his sigh. "I'm looking forward to looking like myself again."

Simple pronouncement. Cam knows better than to show pity, just like JD knows better than to ever show it to him. So he lets it go, but he files it away, slots it into the picture he's building of the man he's sharing his life with. He'll be figuring it out for the next twenty years, if this lasts that long. "I'm glad we came," he says. Because he is. It's been an awkward and uncomfortable day, and tomorrow when the rest of the family descends it's only going to get worse, and they're here until Sunday and Cam's sure he's going to want to hang himself by tomorrow afternoon at the latest. But he's glad they came.

"So am I," JD says. "It's good for you."

And that's it, Cam realizes; that's the real reason JD's been trying so hard to shake everyone up all day, trying to integrate who he is and who he appears to be and present something in between for everyone around him to chew over. He's been cueing the family all day that he's not what he looks like, in so many subtle ways that they've all been, unconsciously, responding to him as though he were the man he really is, and it's confusing them and shaking them up and it's going to take a while for them to settle down, but the one thing it's done is made them _think_ , instead of just leaping to judgement.

And he's been doing it for Cam's sake. Because Cam needs his family to think well of him, and JD knows that, and all of a sudden Cam wonders how far JD would go to keep him happy and settled. A long damn way, he thinks. He's JD's people now.

"I appreciate you," Cam says. They tell each other that a lot. It's better than using words that scare them both to say.

"I do too," JD says. Then sighs, and brushes his lips over Cam's forehead, like a blessing. "Go to sleep," he says, and Cam rolls over in the darkness and does.

He wakes up the next morning to the distant sound of "Jonathan Daniel Nielson, you get back in here and help me get this turkey in the oven before I take a spoon to you," and he smiles into his pillow. It's the sound of Momma threatening family.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Christmas brings their first fight, their first communication breakthrough, and the first time Cam really understands who he's dating.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Originally [posted](https://synecdochic.dreamwidth.org/141620.html) 2007-07-25.)

## 

three

December goes by quick as a bullet. Code review and user acceptance and the last little details of interface and bugfixes, and they're working seventeen-hour days to pull it all off by deadline. And Lord, is Cam ever grateful that they're still working out of the living room, despite the way it makes their world narrow in and close down until there's nothing but the two of them and a whole lot of code, because he can't imagine trying to keep to a schedule this brutal while at the same time dealing with the exhaustion of dealing with a world so unaccomodating of physical limitations -- it's amazing how much more energy he started to have when JD started handling all the little things like shopping and errands. Still, there's travel in there (JD comes with him on his trip East for the next round of demos, but it's to serve as hands and feet during travel when necessary; Cam has to be the one to be the public face), and the errands he can't delegate, and what with one thing and the next, it's the week before Christmas and they're just fucking wiped.

Cam does his Christmas shopping online, but it takes _time_ to buy for family. They've used a complicated system of gifting for as long as he can remember: you buy for immediate family members every year, and get assigned another five names through lottery and pulling-out-of-a-hat. It's the only way to keep things even vaguely manageable. And his family's still touch-and-go on the topic of JD, but Momma puts him in the drawing anyway, which means Cam's stuck explaining the history and personality and tastes of Cousin Lorena and Uncle Roy and Little Jerry and Carson and Bella Jo so JD can make smart choices.

Cam digs up a first edition of _Shumerische Grammatik mit Übungsstücken und zwei Anhängen_ for Uncle Al, bribes Uncle Bayliss with a fifth of really good vodka to make a lovely dovetail-joined cherrywood bookcase with hand-carved ornamentation for Susie Mae (and Maria, but Susie Mae's the reader in that family). JD helps him put together the care package for Raymond -- won't make it to Iraq by Christmas, but it's okay; Cam's gifting Raymie's whole unit, and it'll be welcome whenever it gets there. 

His daddy gets a new set of high-end poker chips to replace the ones that are peeling and cracking, his momma gets perfume (it's a tradition), his brother Ash gets the complete series of _Are You Being Served_ on DVD. Cindy Lou gets a gift certificate for a day of pampering at the spa (she deserves it); for Chandler, their oldest, it's a remote-controlled airplane (traditional gift from the closest uncle on the Christmas closest to a boy's eighth birthday), for Stewart a chess set (Ash is teaching him to play, and he's got a knack for it; Cam's a little embarrassed to realize the six-year-old can kick his ass). For little Lucy, Cam hesitates, but there's no real way around it; she's the first family baby in years he didn't knit a christening blanket for, so it's time to make up the lack now. He'll have to make it plainer than he usually likes -- lack of time, lack of practice -- but he's got a hundred suitable patterns lurking in his fingers' memory waiting to be called forth. 

He's stuck on a present for JD, though. A proper Christmas present should either be something someone always wanted and never would buy for themselves, or something you crafted with your own two hands, or something that someone never knew they wanted but won't be able to live without. Everything he thinks of for JD is either hopelessly inadequate or completely impersonal or nothing at all like the message he'd want to send. He's glad when JD says, while they're sealing up the third of the boxes for Raymie and his men, "You wanna just skip the present thing, you and me?"

"Yeah," Cam says, with relief. Because JD _gets_ it. Whatever it is they've got, the two of them, it can't be put into symbols that can be wrapped up and stowed under the Christmas tree. JD values symbols; Cam knows that much. Nobody who tattoos his stories under his skin like that doesn't. And it's not that Cam isn't looking for the right symbol, for the _proper_ symbol. It's just that he hasn't found it yet, and he doesn't want to get it wrong.

But in the week leading up to Christmas, JD's suddenly quieter, more indrawn, and Cam can't tell what's causing it: stress or overwork or just the ghost of Christmases past come knocking on the door of his memories. It worries Cam, but he's figured out the difference between problems he can ask about and problems he has to just wait for JD to work through, and this isn't the kind of thing that'll get better for poking at it. He makes an effort to remember to touch JD more often -- not even sexual, though there's always that; their sex life is one thing that hasn't suffered from exhaustion. Just the sort of careless touch that JD so excels at, eats right up when Cam gives it back: the one that says _I am aware of your presence, and I want you to know that I notice you_.

And then, three days before they're scheduled to fly back East and plunge headfirst into the overwhelming bustle of family -- Christmas is even more overwhelming than Thanksgiving, which is why Cam's glad they had Thanksgiving as a test drive -- three things all happen in the wrong place at the wrong time. One, JD accidentally kicks his laptop off the coffee table while climbing over to go down on Cam -- JD's notions of how to communicate "time for a break" being singleminded at times -- and cracks the screen, necessitating a trip back to the manufacturer for replacement. Two, JD accidentally leaves a shell session open to his email inbox when he borrows Cam's laptop to check for updates on the repair. And three, Cam mistakes it for his own email, and opens up the message from "Lt. Col. Samantha Carter  <samantha.carter@groomlake.af.mil>" before he realizes the mistake.

Date: Tue, 20 Dec 2005 07:56:08 UTC  
From: samantha.carter@groomlake.af.mil  
To: jdn@nielsonmitchell.com  
Subject: RE: phone_home() subroutine

On Monday, 19 Dec 2005, "JD Nielson" wrote:

> stumped. you got any ideas why this isn't working?

[snip code]

You're declaring etdigits as signed, but every time you're calling it,  
you're treating it as unsigned. I think that's it, at least. I can't  
tell, not without seeing the rest of the code. Try fixing that and see  
if it helps?

> leaving for christmas command appearance in a few days, so if I don't  
> hear back from you before then, have a good one.

I will. I wish I could make it this year, but Cam hasn't called me back  
any of the times I've called him since -- well, you know. You'd better  
be taking care of him for me.

\--Sam

 

Cam stares at the email for a good long minute before closing the session and closing out the terminal window. There's something cold and furious in the pit of his stomach. He's known Sam Carter since back in their Academy days, and there have been years when they were nigh-inseperable and years where they didn't get the chance to say more than twenty words to each other. And part of the joy of joining the Snakeskinners had been the chance to work near her again, and part of the disjointed memories he carries of those early days in the hospital are images of her, eyes red, holding on to his hand fit to beat the band, saying over and over again "you did it, we did it, it's all okay", and he hasn't talked to her since the day JD showed up on his doorstop and saved him from slowly going crazy. 

Not because he's mad at her. Not because it would be too awkward to be in touch with someone who used to know him when he was whole. Sam Carter's better than that; some people wouldn't be, but Sam's been close to family for long enough to know better. No, he hasn't talked to her since the day JD walked into his life because he knows she'll consider Jack O'Neill to be her commanding officer from now until the end of time, no ifs ands or buts, and because he knew she'd recognize JD in a heartbeat, and there's no way Cam could talk about his life now without telling her about just _why_ he's happy.

Turns out, apparently, he didn't have to worry. Turns out JD hadn't entirely been truthful when he'd said he'd cut ties and never looked back.

When JD comes back from the corner store, cheeks pink, shoulders dusted with a sprinkling of water-drops -- must be snowing again -- and hands full of grocery bags, Cam's sitting on the couch, knitting needles in hand, and he's had to rip back the same five rows of the pattern repeat six times because he's built up too much of a head of steam to be able to keep track of the stitches. "Hey," JD says, kicking the door shut behind him. "Ran into Mrs. Chaisorn on my way back; she wants to know if we've got plans for New Year's Eve yet. I told her we'd probably be done with the last bits of this round of contract hell, but I didn't know if you --" 

He stops short, puts the bags down on the floor. Crosses the room to crouch down in front of the couch, because (Cam knows) he can see the temper Cam's riding. "Hey," he says. "What's wrong?"

Cam yanks out an accidental yarn-over. "You said you cut ties with the SGC," he says. He's aware of how accusatory it sounds, and it would make him wince, but he's too fucking pissed. "With SG-1."

JD frowns. "I did. Why?"

His voice has a hint of mad in it, too: mad at the questioning, mad at Cam's tone, mad at the reminder. There's a part of Cam that cares, and a part of him that doesn't give a shit. "You left your mail open on my machine," he says. ( _slip one, knit two together, knit two together, knit two together, yarn over, knit one, yarn over..._ ) "Thought it was mine. Read the latest before I realized. You didn't tell me you and Sam stayed in touch."

There's a pause, a fractional pause, the silence before the explosion. "We don't," JD says, voice calm. "Not really. She emailed me about a year back after I released a package on Sourceforge, asking if I was who she thought she was. I didn't lie to her. We've had a few threads going back and forth occasionally since then. I wouldn't call us 'close'."

Cam doesn't look up. He knows he can't risk it; he's not even sure _why_ he's so angry, except that he's been going out of his way to keep clear of one of his oldest friends because he didn't want to cause JD any more hurt than he already carried. Maybe that's enough to make him this angry. "She send you out here to check up on me?" he asks, and oh, yeah, that's the other half of it, hard and cold and furious. "Sleeping with me your idea, or hers?"

He can see, just above the knitting he's keeping his eyes on, JD's face go shocked, then blank. JD rocks up to his feet and folds his arms across his chest. "I'm going to pretend you didn't just ask that," JD says. 

And oh, Cam knows better. _Knows_ better. But he can't stop himself. "Sure," he hears himself saying. "I've been pretending I didn't know her for the past five months for your peace of mind. What else have you been pretending about for mine?"

It comes out of nowhere. Cam's always known JD moves like lightning when he wants to, but when JD's knuckles plow into his jaw, well, he doesn't see that coming at all. His fingers are all tangled up with yarn and needles, and he can't get up out of the damn couch's clutches fast even when he's got _help_ and he doesn't think JD will be inclined to help him. His jaw screams at him. JD isn't trying to really hurt him, he can tell -- if JD wanted to hurt him, he'd be dead -- but JD didn't exactly pull his punch, either, and Cam looks up to find JD staring down at him with murder in his eyes.

"I don't do pity fucks," JD says, neat and clipped and simmering with rage. "And if you ever suggest I do again, if you think the last five months have been because Carter told me to come fix you, I'll break your jaw the next time."

Two years ago, Cam would have come up swinging. Two years ago, Cam _could_ have come up swinging. "Sure," he snarls: angry at JD, angry at his useless legs, angry at _himself_. "Because babysitting a cripple is your idea of a good fucking time."

JD's jaw twitches, and then Cam can see -- even through the mad he's in the midst of -- JD do something extraordinary; he closes his eyes, and a ripple runs all through his skin, and he says, tonelessly, "One of us needs to be out of this place in the next two minutes. If you can't take stairs today, I'll go."

It only makes Cam more pissed, even though he knows in his heart of hearts that the two of them can't fight clean when they're this riled up. They've already proven that, and they're stronger for knowing it. But in the mood he's in, it's just another proof that JD's -- doing _something_ ; he can't even tell why he's mad about it really, except he _is_. He doesn't say anything. He just drops his knitting to the floor and reaches for his cane and his coat, and out the damn fucking door he goes. He's got just enough presence of mind to remember to bring his cell phone with him. Just in case.

Every step down the stairs is an eternity, and the snow's settled in in earnest, and Cam's pissed off and heartsick and all he wants to do is call his momma and listen to her tell him it'll be all right. Except he can't, because there's no way he can tell her any damn part of all of this to make it make sense. So he doesn't. He settles in on the bottom step -- too damn cold out there to sit outside, even though the air would probably do him some good -- and he starts making his way through the loose network of old friends and friends-of-friends until he finds someone who's got the phone number he needs.

She answers on the fourth ring, the same way she always answers. "Carter." 

His throat closes over at the sound of her. She sounds happy. It takes him a minute before he can manage, "Your idea or his to pretend you didn't know each other?"

He won't have to explain it. They never have to explain to each other; they're the kind of friends who could go without talking for ten years and pick the conversation straight up where they left off. She doesn't do anything stupid like pretend she doesn't know who it is on the other end of the phone, pretend she doesn't know what he's talking about. She knows him too well; she can hear that he's angry about _something_ , and she knows that the only thing anyone can do when Cam's angry is give him the truth. "I didn't say one way or the other, so I guess it was his. I haven't talked to him more than twice since he got there."

Cam has to know; he _has_ to. "Was that your idea?"

He can hear her puzzled frown. "He asked if I knew anyone who used to be with the program who fit what he was looking for. I knew you did. I knew you were probably going stir-crazy. I gave him your name and number and asked him to let me know how you were doing, because you weren't returning my calls and your momma said you weren't talking to her much either. Cam? What's wrong?"

He doesn't say anything. He can't. Her voice sharpens. "Cam? Is everything all right? What do you need?"

"Everything's fine," he manages, through the lump in his throat. "Just -- just needed to know, is all."

"You fought about something, didn't you." She sounds suspicious. "Is he -- I mean, I know the General can be -- difficult, but I thought -- _he_ sounded like he'd made some decisions --"

It's odd how neither of them are using names. The habit of secrecy is hard for them both to break, he guesses. "He's fine," Cam says. "It's just --"

He can hear the tiny shocked noise she can't quite cover up, and he guesses he must have let something creep into his voice that he shouldn't have. "Momma said you were seeing someone, but she didn't say who," she says. A little too rushed, a little too panicky. "Cam, is it -- are you --" 

"I had to know if you sent him," Cam says. Or hears his voice say, because he doesn't feel like he's in the driver's seat of anything right now, but he's pretty sure either way that he doesn't want to hear her finish that question, doesn't want to know what verb she'd put in there. They've never talked about sex, not really -- sex with other people, sex with each other. Never openly. He's known some of her lovers and she's known some of his, and she's never said a word about how some of his lovers are men just like he's never said a word about how some of her lovers are assholes. He loves her like family and they're near sibling-close, but there are some places it's better if they just don't ever go.

She's pissed at him now. He can tell by the timbre of her indrawn breath. Pissed and upset and confused and feeling like she's just gotten the legs kicked out from under her. Which settles something. It means she didn't know JD drove stick too, which means she just found out something she didn't know about O'Neill. 

Which means she hadn't sent JD to him. At least not for _that_. Which means that this wasn't some kind of fucked-up reparation for guilt, the guilt he knows she still carries, the guilt of being the one who put his name in the running for the Snakeskinners and being the one whose ass they'd died to save. She'd cried at his bedside when she'd thought he'd been drugged to oblivion; she'd apologized to his semi-aware self, over and over, but once he'd been up and around (as much as he could be) she'd given him nothing but forced smiles full of the hidden pity that he'd already learned to resent.

And now she's pissed at him: pissed at his implications, pissed at his underlying accusations. Pissed that he's told her something she didn't want to know.

He cuts her off before she can say anything. Before either of them can say something they regret, because he's had enough of that for one damn night. "I'm sorry," he says. Means it, too. "I --"

But his throat closes over before he knows where that sentence might be going, and all he wants to do is put his fist through the wall and rewind this day so it never went down the way it's been going. 

Her voice, when she speaks, is quiet. Resigned. "I hope you two are happy," she says, and it shouldn't feel as final as it does; she means it, he knows. Hopes that he's happy; hopes that he's well. He just can't shake the feeling that her sentence is a closing door, a hand putting the period at the end of a novel. Something about it makes him wonder if she's putting paid to the two of them, or to something else entire.

He has to laugh, but it's the laugh of impending hysteria. "He socked me in the mouth 'bout fifteen minutes back, but -- yeah. We kinda are."

"Well, you probably deserved it," she says, and yeah, okay, he's calmed down enough to cop to the fact that he kind of did. "Is he --" Her breath catches again, and shit, _shit_ , he's starting to see the shape of it. Of what she's never told him, and why this hurts her so badly, and what little quiet dreams she might have been cherishing. JD never told him. Cam wonders if JD even knows.

Of course JD knows. Cam just wonders if O'Neill does.

"Is he okay?" she asks, and God does his heart break for her.

"Yeah," he says, quietly. He can give her that much. "He's okay." Fiercely okay, vividly okay, like JD is grabbing onto "well-adjusted" and digging in his claws and refusing to ever let it go no matter how hard he has to work to hold it. He wishes he could tell her about some of it: about the tattoos, about the conversations, about the way JD's hand falls thoughtlessly against Cam's skin when they're sitting within touching range. But something tells him Sam would see the tattoos as a symptom and the touching as a sign, and the conversations aren't his to share. 

He offers up what he can. "You should come visit." _Come see. Come ease your mind._

She laughs, and it's sharp and broken. "I don't think that would be a good idea. Not yet." She pauses. He can hear her sucking air, the way you struggle to get your breath back after someone's punched you in the solar plexus. "Not -- not because of you. You know."

"Yeah," Cam says, because he does. Because Sam's just told him without needing to use words that she's in love with Jack O'Neill sure as sunrise, and Cam's not so cruel as to make her look JD in the eye until she's good and ready. And ending this conversation is the kindest thing he can do for her right now, so he says, "I'll let you get back to what you were doing. Momma'll want to hear from you on Christmas. We can talk then."

"Yeah," she says. Weak and shaky, and oh, Cam's glad they're not in the same room right now, because he's always been brought low by the sight of a woman's tears. "I'll talk to you then, okay?"

Cam's left holding his cell phone in both hands, turning it over and over and over, and with a little nagging voice in the back of his head asking _why?_ Because he knows himself; the kind of headful of steam he'd worked up doesn't come from nothing, doesn't come over nothing. And he knows himself well enough to know that he can't go upstairs, can't face JD again, until he knows what set him off so badly. Whether or not JD wants to talk about it, and Cam's pretty sure JD won't want to talk about it, Cam needs to know _why_.

Not the thought of pity, because he already knows JD doesn't pity him. Or maybe that's it; maybe it's _because_ JD's never shown pity for him that he got his back up so quickly at the faintest hint that there might have been some lurking, that it might have always been a hidden motivation. He doesn't think that's it, though. It's a good enough reason for the surface anger, but it rings wrong for the deeper ones. If it'd been just that, he would have flashed furious for a minute or two and then calmed down and gotten to the bottom of it all.

So there's something more there. Something lurking underneath all the nice neat surface answers, something he should probably figure out before he sucks it up and goes back upstairs to apologize, because if he doesn't know what twigged him he won't be able to steer clear of it again. And God, but he misses the days when he could strap on his tennis shoes and go running until his chest was heaving and his calves were burning and his mind was silent and still, ready to let the conclusions he _knows_ he knows bubble up from the spot in his subconscious where they're lurking to float past his conscious mind. But he can't do that anymore, and he's going to have to find a different way of dealing with it. 

Doesn't mean it's not yet another thing that sucks about his life right now.

He shoulders himself into his coat and shoves the cell phone into his pocket. It's cold outside, bitter cold, the kind of cold that he'll never get used to as long as he lives; he catches himself thinking that he'll have to try to talk JD into moving to a warmer climate, shies away from the thought before he can do much more than stub a mental toe on it. It's the kind of cold that gets down deep into his joints and makes him ache for days; it's why he's been staying inside as much as possible, why JD has been the one to handle grocery shopping and errand-running and all the other thousand things able-bodied people don't think twice about doing. The air is clear and dry, so cold it hurts his lungs, but it tastes like freedom anyway. Cam's always been bad at staying cooped up.

The snow he'd seen on JD's shoulders when JD came back upstairs -- half an hour ago? Not long, at least -- had stopped at some point; a light dusting of powder covers the sidewalks. Not enough to shovel, but it had been warm enough before the sun went down that some of the perpetual winter snowbank at the curb had melted and is re-freezing underneath. He can feel the ice lurking beneath his shoes, beneath the rubber tip of his cane, even despite the salt the Merchant's Association spreads around after every new storm or every warm day. The ice slows him down, but he won't let it stop him. He places his feet carefully, and he tests each step before he commits to it, and his knees and his thighs and his back hurts like sweet blazes but he's not going to give in. 

It's not the same as a good long run, but it's what he's got available to him. The downtown streets are all decked out for Christmas, lights and garlands, and there's a decent enough crowd that some of the storefront shops are still open, even this late. He goes by the host of restaurants they know so intimately, the bars that make him almost want to stop and get a shot or two of something to -- no; the way he's feeling right now, one shot won't be enough and the last thing he wants is to come home drunk and disorderly. Not smart. 

So he keeps putting one foot after the other, head down, concentrating on where he's stepping and looking for ice patches or rough spots or even just a fucking sidewalk crack -- all of which have tripped him up in the past, and he doesn't particularly feel like courting a dislocated knee or a broken ankle from falling wrong. He's not going anywhere in particular. He's just walking, and trying to give himself space to think.

His fingers are red and cracking with the cold by the time he works his way around downtown and back to their building. That's the part he always hates; it reminds him too much of a snowfield in Antarctica, of drifting in and out of consciousness and watching his skin redden, then whiten. It reminds him of being pinned. Being helpless. To this day, he doesn't know how long he was trapped in the wreckage before the rescue teams came. He doesn't particularly want to know.

It takes him three tries to unlock the downstairs door, fumbling and uncertain, but he doesn't let it bother him; he tries to hold on to the things he's realized, and the things he thinks he knows how he has to say, and he gets himself up the stairs an eternity at a time and doesn't let himself think about what he'll do if he doesn't find JD on the other side of the inside door.

The living room's empty; the lights are off. Cam almost loses his hard-won serenity before he sees JD's shoes placed neatly behind the door, where they always are, where there's little chance of Cam tripping over them. He leans against the door for a minute in relief, and then sheds his coat and hangs it up and thumps slowly into the bedroom after a detour into the kitchen for his nightly handful of pills.

The lights are off in the bedroom, too, and JD is in bed: lying on his side, his back to the door, sheet pulled loosely around his hips and the dark lines of his tattoos showing stark and bold against his pale skin. His being there is a good sign. Cam doesn't bother with trying to keep quiet; JD wakes at any level of noise, and the more Cam tries to be quiet, the more JD's reflexes interpret stealth as threat. He crosses the room, and sits down on the edge of the bed, and unties his shoes one by one.

JD is awake; Cam knows JD is awake. But he's silent, and JD's silence is the kind that can fill a room.

There are some things they can only say in the dark. Or rather, there are some things JD can only say in the dark, and some things it has to be dark for JD to be willing to hear. Cam's got the feeling this conversation will be full of them. He sets down his other shoe. As he's working his way out of his pants, he says, "I'm sorry I got so upset." 

Never hurts to lead with an apology, Momma always taught him. JD doesn't move, doesn't say anything, but Cam hadn't expected him to.

"Thing is," Cam says -- pulling off his shirt, chucking it and his pants at the laundry basket, missing as always; he'll have to remember to avoid them in the morning -- "I thought I was pissed off because I didn't want pity. Then I realized two big things that made a lot of other things fall into place."

Still no reaction. He stretches out on his back, pulls the sheet up over him, folds his hands behind his head. He can feel the heat coming from JD, the way his skin always seems to run a couple of degrees hotter than everyone else's, the way that Cam's always been careful never to wonder whether that's just the way he is or whether something went wrong in the making of him. 

"I know there are plenty of things you won't ever talk to me about," Cam says to the ceiling. "I know there are plenty of things you don't want to say to anybody, and I know just enough about what's in 'em to know that a whole lot of them are things I don't really want to hear. And I won't ever make you talk about 'em. Won't ask, won't push. On one condition."

He takes a deep breath. Waits for a second to see if JD will say something (anything), but when JD doesn't, Cam goes on. "I'll take 'I don't want to talk about it' and I'll take 'maybe someday' and I'll even take 'shut up, Mitchell,' but I won't take you lying to me. Not about anything, but especially not about things that have to do with me. With us." _If there is an 'us',_ he thinks, but doesn't let it stop him. He keeps his voice as steady as he can. "And there's a difference between things I need to know and things that don't concern me, and I know you know the difference. I won't take you keeping secrets from me that concern me. I'll never once push you on the rest, but that's something I won't compromise on."

He waits. He'll wait as long as it'll take to get an answer, to get an acknowledgement, but the only thing he gets is JD's voice in the darkness: calm, quiet, controlled. "What's the other thing you realized?"

Deep breath. "That I'm pretty sure I'm falling in love with you, and that's why it hurt so bad." 

He doesn't know what he's expecting. The realization, when he'd had it, had nearly kicked him in the pants; obvious in retrospect, impossible to have predicted. Cam's always been good with his feelings, always been in tune with his emotions and ready and willing to listen to them, but maybe something about JD -- who _isn't_ \-- had kept him from being able to really explore them this time. And he'd spent the rest of his walk trying to keep himself from thinking about what JD's reaction is going to be, because he knows JD and he's got a sinking feeling he's just set fire to the life he's been building for the past six months and should prepare to fiddle while it burns. But he can't ask JD not to hold out on him if he isn't prepared to do the same in return. 

He hadn't been expecting JD to laugh.

Laugh thick and bitter, sit up and put his legs over the side of the bed and bury his face in his hands. Cam lifts a hand, gets ready to roll himself over. "No," JD says, and Cam freezes. JD always knows where he is in a room. JD always knows when Cam's about to touch him.

It's so quiet Cam can hear JD breathing. He closes his eyes. Starts thinking about what he'll do now, what he'll do instead of what they're doing. Maybe best to move back home for a while, wait out the winter weather and see what there is in the spring. He's become a much better programmer in the past few months than he ever has been before. He'll be marketable somewhere.

"Don't do this," JD finally says, his voice muffled against his palms. "Don't make it be about this."

"I'm sorry," Cam says. It's all he's got. "I --"

"Shut up, Mitchell," JD says, and Cam's bound by his own words; he shuts.

The bed shifts. Cam opens his eyes; he's enough of a masochist to want to watch JD walking out on him. But all JD does is get up and walk, still naked, over to the window. He rests his hands on the windowsill, and he bends over and rests his forehead on the glass, and Cam thinks he might be looking to cool himself off a little. The glass leeches the heat from his skin; Cam can see it fogging up. 

"I never told you why my wife left me," JD says. Simple, calm, not a bit of anger or upset lurking in there, but it breaks Cam's heart anyway. Then the words get from his ears to his brain, and he nearly stops breathing, because he's suddenly listening to Jack O'Neill and he hadn't even noticed. Hadn't realized. He should have been able to tell.

He sits up. "No," he says, just as quietly. "You didn't."

"Lots of reasons. Lots of stupid reasons. Stupid on my part, not hers. But mostly because I'd never fucking talk to her." JD turns his head, and his eyes are nothing but two black smudges as he lets them settle on Cam's face. "Promised myself I wouldn't make the same mistake this time around. Promised myself I'd learn to open my mouth. New body, new chances."

Cam has no idea where JD is going with this, so he just nods, feeling wide and uncertain. This all suddenly feels like the wrong way to go about things, the wrong frame for the conversation, the wrong confrontation at the wrong time. But done is done, and he can't do anything but wait for JD to say something else.

JD finally sighs. "I'd really like to put my fist through this window right about now," he says, conversationally.

Cam finds his voice. "Wish you wouldn't," he says. "Cold outside."

Simple things; inane things. JD sighs again. "You really mean it when you say you don't give a shit if I don't tell you things, don't you."

"Yeah," Cam says. The small of his back is starting to burn from the way he's sitting, but he doesn't want to lie back down and he doesn't exactly want to swing his legs over the side of the bed and sit like that, either; that would tempt him too much to get up, walk over to JD's side. To touch. He doesn't think JD wants to be touched right now. "Unless they have to do with me. Because it's about --" He fumbles for the right word. Can't find one, but there's one that comes close. "Respect." 

JD nods, once. Then looks away. "Whole lot of unprogramming to do."

"I know," Cam says. He tries to make it as gentle as he can. "I wouldn't ask if it wasn't important. To me."

"Yeah." It's JD's _this sucks_ voice. He straightens up and comes over to the bedside. Sits on the edge of the bed, right next to Cam, one hip propped up on the bed and the other foot on the floor to brace him. Cam wants to hold his breath; he makes himself breathe anyway. JD's hands come up to cup his face, lightly, and Cam's heart beats just a little faster, because even when JD's calm and resigned, he's dangerous. 

"I never expected you," JD says. "You need to know that."

JD's thumbs are stroking Cam's cheekbones, like he isn't even aware he's doing it. The spot he hit earlier still hurts; it's going to bruise. Cam swallows, hard, and licks his lips. "Okay," he says. It's a relief to know; it's a relief to have it spelled out like that.

"Go to sleep," JD says, low and hypnotic. Cam wants to protest, wants to point out that nothing's been resolved and if there's one thing he's learned about relationships, it's that you should never go to sleep with something unfinished hanging over your head. But JD's face and JD's voice tells Cam that there won't be anything else said, and Cam knows better than to push, as much as he'd like to.

He lies down, and JD stays where he is. Cam doesn't know what he's expecting, but JD puts a hand on his chest and leaves it there; Cam isn't sure if it's to hold him down or just because JD wants to touch and that's the easiest place to reach. He hopes it's the latter. He's tired enough, worn through enough, that he's asleep within minutes, and if JD moves, Cam doesn't notice. 

Cam wakes up face-down in the bed, the covers tangled around his waist, a pillow over his head. It's chilly in the room, but not brisk. He climbs slowly to awareness on the wings of the knowledge that the apartment is empty; he isn't sure how he knows. He's overslept. Not that his life has a schedule, but his body clock does, and it's played him false.

He holds on to the hope that JD is out for his morning run. It sustains him through his shower, as he's getting dressed. There's a note propped up against his pill bottles in the kitchen. Smartest place to leave it; there's nowhere else Cam's guaranteed to look. _I'll be back. Don't worry. Don't wait up. -J_

Cam holds the note in his hands for a long time, before setting it down on the counter and rooting through the cabinets to find something he can call breakfast.

Morning turns to afternoon; afternoon turns to evening. Cam settles himself on the same spot of the couch he always uses; the living room's too small to stand having a desk crammed into it. The ergonomics kind of suck a little, and Cam's sure his physical therapist would scream bloody murder if she saw, but it's comfortable enough and it keeps his back from aching in a way a desk chair wouldn't. He can't seem to concentrate on what needs to be done, so he spends the day hacking on the ftp client he's writing in his spare time because he hates every single one he's ever tried. He isn't expecting to get anywhere, but to his surprise, as soon as he's down in the guts of the code, instinct takes over and he's absorbed in his work. 

He doesn't think about anything but the code he's trying to write. He's said what he has to say, and now it's up to JD to decide whether or not to accept it. Fretting won't get him anywhere but an ulcer and an early grave from stress.

Evening turns to night, and JD still hasn't returned. Cam gives up at around ten o'clock and microwaves a slice of the pizza left over from two nights back. He eats it over the sink. When he's finished, he turns the paper of JD's note over and scribbles on the back: _Wake me when you get in._

JD won't, but that's not the point. Cam leaves the note propped up against the pharmacy and takes himself on off to bed. He's careful to keep to what's become his side of the bed; until he hears otherwise, he'll assume JD's going to still have want of the other.

To his surprise, he does wake up in the middle of the night -- not completely, not to full consciousness, but just enough to recognize the sounds of the door shutting and locking, the sound of footsteps, the dip of the bed as JD slides into his accustomed place. He stirs, intending to say something -- _where have you been_ or _have you figured things out_ or even just _hey_ \-- but JD settles skin against skin, rests his forehead against the back of Cam's skull, and wraps one arm around Cam's chest the way he always does. "Shh," JD says, nothing more, and Cam slides right back under. JD smells of soap and clear, crisp mountain air, and his skin is cold with winter the way it all-too-seldom is.

And it's a comfort, and it eases something tight in the depths of Cam's chest, and when he wakes up again with the morning sunlight in his eyes, it doesn't hurt as much as it probably should to find JD gone again. The note's been turned back over, and a line's been added to the bottom: _yes, I remember we've got plane tickets for tomorrow._

Cam stands in the kitchen, his eyes closed, his heart beating. He's half furious and half hurt and half resigned and half hopeful, and he doesn't care if that adds up wrong. He can't decide if he's pissed off or not, until the whole situation comes crashing down on his head and he's laughing. Laughing not because it's funny, but because it's so utterly ridiculous that it's a perfect sign of what his life has become.

He settles in to work with a lighter heart. He doesn't understand -- every time he thinks he understands JD, something else rises from the depths to broadside him -- but somehow, he thinks he doesn't quite need to. JD came back, and came back to their bed, and that fact might not mean as much as it looks on the surface, but it means a lot to Cam, and, well, it might be the only good sign he's got, but as good signs go, it's not a bad one. JD is thinking, is all. Just so happens that JD has to do his thinking somewhere other than here.

Cam can do his thinking just about anywhere, and what he's thinking about today is what he knows of Jack O'Neill. Not just the parts JD has told him -- though those too, and they're important, because the way JD talks about O'Neill's life at any given time is a sign of how much he feels bound by it -- but the parts Cam knows thirdhand, by osmosis. He's been in the same room as O'Neill (and conscious for it) so few times he could count them on both hands and not need to resort to his leftover toes, and O'Neill's a master at presenting to the world nothing more than the face the world expects. But Cam's got a good enough read on people to know one important thing. O'Neill would have left too, just like JD did. But O'Neill wouldn't have come back.

For a minute he thinks of calling up O'Neill's office in Washington -- _pardon me, sir, but I'm looking for advice on dealing with the version of you I'm fucking_ \-- and he presses his palm firmly against his lips to keep from breaking out into hysterical laughter. 

Before he heads to bed, he turns the note over again and underlines every word of the sentence on his side of the paper. Then, just so JD can't claim innocence or misinterpretation, adds a few exclamation points for good measure, and adds _(I really mean it)_ at the bottom. He doesn't expect JD is going to pay attention, but he wakes up in the middle of the night when JD's weight settles onto his chest and opens his eyes to find JD staring down at him, expressionless.

"Hi," Cam says, tentatively. JD doesn't say anything, just keeps looking at him. Cam once spent a summer with Aunt Aggie, waking up every morning to find her damn prissy Siamese sitting on his chest and giving him the thousand-yard stare. JD's got the same might-claw-your-eyeballs-out look in his eyes. Cam knows better than to ever make the comparison out loud.

Just when Cam's about ready to concede that JD followed the letter of his note, if not the spirit -- woke him up right and proper, even if Cam had meant "wake me up so we can actually have a conversation about this" -- JD says, precisely as though he's continuing a conversation that had only been placed on pause while he went to the bathroom or to the kitchen for a drink of water, "I can live with that."

It actually takes Cam a minute to realize what the fuck JD is talking about; he'd almost forgotten the ultimatums he'd given. When he remembers, he licks his lips. "Which part?"

That gets a faint, tiny smile. "Both of them. You're right. I've been holding out on you. Won't say I'm sorry. But, you need more, okay. I can live with that."

Cam takes a deep breath. "Okay," he says. He feels slow, sluggish. He knows JD well enough to know that's not why JD chose the middle of the night to keep going with this conversation, but he also knows JD well enough to know that JD will consider it an added side benefit. "Is there anything else --"

_Anything else you've been holding out on me_ , it's going to be, until JD's hand comes down on his mouth. Cam sighs; JD has direct and indirect ways of getting him to shut up, and this is one of the time-honored direct ways. "Yes," JD says. "There is. But not right now."

It pisses Cam off. He's spent the past two days waiting for JD to get his shit together, and he's put his entire life on hold waiting for some kind of resolution to the fight, and he doesn't want to push, but he also doesn't want to go through the stress and strain of a family Christmas with this hanging over his head, and he'd like to think he deserves a little bit of consideration. "I --" he starts, lips moving against JD's skin.

JD shakes his head, quickly. "Not now," he repeats, and then for the first time ever, Cam sees something almost like fear in his eyes. He takes a deep breath. "In the daylight, okay?"


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What JD tells Cam.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Originally [posted](https://synecdochic.dreamwidth.org/142233.html) 2007-08-01.)
> 
> Title of this piece is because something about JD makes me think of Ani DiFranco songs: _first you decide what you've got to do, and then you go out and do it; maybe the most that we can do is just to see each other through it._

## 

interlude: hour follows hour

I realized I'd fallen in love with Daniel in a single flashpoint second of revelation over beer and lies. Trying to say with my eyes what I couldn't say with my lips, and knowing Daniel was only hearing the words designed to drive him away. I'd looked up, intending to say something sparse and cutting -- get him away, get him _out_ , before I said something I shouldn't and blew it all to hell -- and I saw Daniel frowning back at me with this little faint line creasing his forehead, and I caught my breath and tumbled headfirst into realization. Even now I've got to wonder, if that damn undercover mission hadn't happened right in the middle of that damn awful year, would things have been different?

But in my heart of hearts I know better. Daniel's openhearted and generous and caring, and I came close to saying something more than a few times. Nothing overt, nothing specific. Just a few hints here and there. And every time I came up against the boundaries of the conversation I'd rehearsed a thousand ways to Sunday, I just choked. Couldn't do it. Couldn't even start it. Not even when he was dying, not even when he was already dead. 

Daniel's straight, you see. Told you that a few times before. And he's openhearted and openminded, and he would have listened straight through, and he would have said something about being flattered and something about being honored and something about how he loved me too. Just not like that. And from that point on, nothing would have ever been the same again, and I wasn't in love enough with honesty to want to buy it at the cost of the little bits I could have.

Then I woke up one Tuesday morning and found that I was fifteen years old again. Surprise. Congratulations, O'Neill: you get a do-over. And all it costs you is your life, your name, your history, and all your old scars. Cheap at twice the price, right? 

Sgt. Browning up in Records let me pick my own new name. "Something you can train yourself to answer to quickly," he'd suggested. I hadn't wanted to tell him that I'd been building backup identities longer than he'd been in the service, even; those were O'Neill's memories, not mine. Even by then I'd been making the distinction. Bobby meant well, and he was doing his best not to treat me like a freak; it helped that he'd been with the SGC since day one, and knew this was far from the freakiest thing that had ever happened. 

And that's how I became Jonathan Daniel Nielson. Emancipated minor, SGC "orphan", recipient of a modest but livable sum of money per month from the Air Force out of the SGC's Blanche Dubois fund. Carter had been the one to name it, of all people, back before I'd found out where she'd been keeping her sense of humor. Teal'c had gotten it immediately; Daniel and I had needed an explanation. Well, I was back to depending on the kindness of strangers, and I wasn't above benefitting from the budget I'd spent -- O'Neill had spent -- seven years trying to protect.

I lasted four weeks in the Colorado Springs public school system, and two of them were just because it took Bobby a little while to fake up my "school records" well enough to show that I'd already filled all their graduation requirements despite my alleged age. Let me tell you, it's tough as hell to keep your dates of birth straight when you've technically got three of 'em: the one you've been rattling off for fifty-three years, the one you and Bobby came up with because it sounded good, and the one where you actually got taken out of the vat you were grown in.

If Loki used a vat to grow me. Not sure. Not particularly interested in finding out, either.

I let O'Neill think I was going to stay put. I knew me well enough to know that if I'd known I was planning on making a run for it, I'd've done something to stop me. Does thinking about this shit make your head hurt as much as it makes my head hurt? Yeah, don't think about it too hard; you'll have an aneurism. Let him think I was going to crawl off into a corner and lick my wounds; I did my best to make him believe it. Didn't tell him about the offer Hammond had made, to keep me on as a consultant. Didn't take the offer, either. Clean breaks are the best.

Didn't tell him about the offer Thor had made, to bring me along with him and let me keep being useful to the Asgard, let me stay Out There instead of stuck on Earth. That would have given him apoplexy. I wasn't interested in spending the rest of my new life on an Asgard cruiser any more than I was interested in staying tethered to the SGC. O'Neill was there to do the things that needed doing. I had a chance at the shiny brass ring: new life. New chances. New mistakes, instead of being defined by the old ones. 

Maybe you don't realize how much of an appeal that was to a man who'd spent thirty-five years being bound by the next logical thing. Daniel once called me a product of my environment. He hadn't meant it as a compliment; we'd been toe-to-toe and yelling at the time. Bitch of it was, I knew what he meant; I'd just never been able to change it. Or hadn't wanted to change it. Too much work, too little reward. Too many things to make the old way of doing things easier. If I was going to change, I needed to do it on my own terms.

Yeah, I know I'm making it sound easy. Gimme a little bit of revisionist history, okay? I think I've earned it. Truth is, it was harder than anything I've ever done before, and I've done a damn lot of hard things in my life. I threw a bunch of changes of clothing into a beat-up old duffel bag and stuck out my thumb on the side of the road, and I started a journey to figure out where Jack O'Neill ended and JD Nielson began. And it took me places I never thought I'd end up going, from a Buddhist temple up in the Pacific Northwest to a little soup kitchen in Wichita, Kansas to a tattoo parlor on the Block up in Baltimore, and the one thing all my answers had in common and the one thing it took me forever to be able to face was that I'd spent my life defining myself by what other people needed from me, and when you took all that away, I couldn't tell you what was left.

Sounds simple. Obvious, even, if you knew me, I guess. I'd heard it thrown in my face enough damn times; none of it was new. I'd just never wanted to face it before. Never had enough reason to. And I'd told myself I was leaving to find out who I was, but I came to realize that before I could figure out who I was, I had to spend a lot of time figuring out who I _wasn't_ , or who I was once upon a time and didn't want to be anymore, and that part was what took me a couple of months and some damn long hard work. 

And the final answer wound up being that I didn't want to be Jack O'Neill anymore. 

Yeah, I know it sounds like sour grapes. But if there's any one person in this universe who understands Jack O'Neill, it's me. He made a bunch of choices really early on, and he spent years and years watching those choices fossilize and trap him in place. He's not a bad guy. He's doing the best he can do with a hell of a burden, and he's carrying a hell of a lot of weight because nobody else will and someone needs to remember, and all he's really trying to do is serve a whole bunch of complicated truths. But maybe it's the distance that comes from not having your old life anymore, and maybe it's the distance that comes from being able to realize you aren't as vested in the comfortable lies we all tell ourselves as you used to be. Either way. All I know is, Jack O'Neill is desperately, quietly, fundamentally unhappy, and he'd rather die than admit it, even to himself. 

'Course, I could be lying to you about that part. I'm not, as it happens. But I could be.

Anyway.

Took me a few months to realize just how much of an opportunity I really had going for me. I mean, how many people get to reinvent their lives with no trace of the old one left behind? I was on a beach in Atlantic City, sitting on the sand and watching the sun rise, when I made myself a promise. I wasn't going to hate the poor bastard for having all the things I'd had to give up. I loved Daniel, and I loved Carter, and I loved Teal'c, and I loved the joy of knowing what I was doing every day of my life was keeping my country, my _planet_ , safe. But the price of having all those things to love was the weight of having to serve them, and I was happy to let O'Neill carry that weight for us both. 

He'd take care of it. I knew he would. He wouldn't know what to do with himself if he didn't. I wouldn't have known what to do with myself if I hadn't woken up one morning to find that the choice had been taken out of my hands. And I could have followed in his footsteps, but even as I'd been realizing what had been done to me, I'd been seeing the tiny little glimmer of hope, of opportunity, lurking underneath. I'll never stop missing the good parts of living O'Neill's life -- and there were a whole damn lot of good parts of O'Neill's life -- but I don't think I'll ever start missing the bad ones. 

I said, _O'Neill_ said, to Daniel once, about a tragedy I don't particularly want to explain: I'll never forgive myself, but I can forget sometimes. And that was true at the time I said it. Maybe that's the biggest difference between me and O'Neill. Couldn't tell you how, couldn't tell you when, but somewhere along the line, I learned to forgive myself. Forgive him. For all of it.

Once I had that in place, everything else started to get easier.

See, the thing is -- I've known it for a while -- you can have one or the other: forgiveness, or forgetting. O'Neill tried forgetting, and it worked for him. For a little while. On and off. Until something reminded him, and a thousand unforgiven loose ends rose up to strangle him. Me, I thought I'd try the other way, and I knew -- couldn't tell you how, but I knew -- that the cost of forgiveness is memory. 

So I put O'Neill's stories, _our_ stories, under my skin, where nobody can see them but me and the people I let look. They're a map of old scars, a reminder of everything I promised myself I'd leave behind. I don't think there's another living soul who'd be able to read them all, just me and him. Daniel would be able to understand the words, but not what they stand for. And I'll carry them there until O'Neill's long turned to dust and I'm the only one of us who's left to remember. Call it the price I'm accepting in order to get the things I never knew I wanted.

I'll tell you someday, if you want. What each of them are. What each of them mean. Not now. It'd take too long, and just because I've accepted them doesn't mean it isn't still too soon to talk about them.

Too soon to talk about a lot of it. Just figuring out how to talk to myself about it took a hell of a lot of time, and just because I said I was going to leave O'Neill's bad habits behind doesn't mean it's _easy_. 

And no, I didn't plan on you. On finding you. I didn't ask Carter to find you and Carter didn't ask me to keep tabs on you. I didn't lie to you; I never have. I came here for the exact reason I said: I needed someone to be the front, the face, for what I was planning on doing after I was done pulling out bits and pieces of my soul and facing old buried shit in the light of day. I didn't come here because you needed me or I needed you, not you specifically. I asked Carter to find me someone who'd left the program because I needed someone who had the cred to approach the powers that be, and I wanted to work with someone I didn't have to pretend around.

Turns out that person was you. Turns out you were another thing I never knew I wanted, and it took me a damn long time to be able to see that for what it was. A chance. You'd probably call it a blessing. I call it fucking terrifying.

Don't look at me like that. Yeah, I said terrifying. I don't think you know how much you scare someone who spent fifty-odd years skating by on comfortable self-delusion. I don't think you've got a self-delusional bone in your body, and you've got this thing going where you won't let anyone around you get away with it either. I made some choices about how I was going to handle things this time around, and I made some promises -- to myself, to the world around me, to whatever there is beyond what we can see, whatever name you want to put on it -- about never lying to myself again. And you call me on them. Every day, every _minute_ , you look me in the eye and you hold me to all those promises you barely even know about. Because it's who you are.

I realized I'd fallen in love with Daniel while I was in the middle of lying to him. Kind of ironic, really, that I realized I was falling in love with you because you make me be the truth.

Couldn't tell you when I realized. A week ago, maybe two. Maybe longer. Maybe it was watching you face down your family and refuse to take the easy way out. Maybe it was realizing that we can fight like cats and dogs and still be okay again after. Maybe it was a little bit of everything all adding up all at once. Scares me to death, you know. It's this big needy pit in my chest, and I don't exactly have the best track record with things like these. You don't believe in the easy way out. And I don't want to believe in the easy way out, because I've done all this damn work already, but it's a long hard road still to go, and I'm going to be walking it for the rest of my life. Old habits die hard, right? 

Two years of learning how to be honest with myself, bit by bit, piece by piece, and standing next to you it's like I don't get a minute to breathe, because I have to do it all the damn time. Not because of anything you do or anything you say. It's nothing you can change. It's nothing I'd want you to change, because it's so natural for you it's what made me fall for you. Everything inside me is still all stirred up and in progress and I've never, _never_ been able to open my mouth and actually say this kind of shit, so you'd better realize what it means. 

What we've got here, you and I, is exactly the kind of thing I would have run screaming from, when I was O'Neill. And it's exactly what I've spent the last two years preparing for, even though I didn't know it at the time. And I'd be terrified of losing it, of losing _you_ , except for some damn reason I have this crazy suspicion that you can actually understand.

I don't want to hurt you. I don't ever want to hurt you. I'm going to, just like you're going to hurt me. Happened already, and I'm sorry for it. And I'll keep being sorry for it, and I'll keep working at it, and I'll keep making mistakes with you and I hope I'll keep learning from them. We're not perfect, and we're never going to be. We've both got a lot of old scars. 

But I'm me now. Not him, _me_ , and the mistakes are going to be mine. Not his. I'm going to backslide, and I'm going to drive you up the fucking wall. But I'm trying, and I'm never going to give up. You need me to talk more; I can do that. I'll remember to do that. Not gonna come easy, but for you I'll try. For us. Because there is an us, and it might scare me senseless, but you know what? I'm starting to think you might be exactly what I need.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Christmas: _nos morituri te salutant_.
> 
> Cam's family does not understand what's going on.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Originally [posted](https://synecdochic.dreamwidth.org/146579.html) 2007-08-20.)

## 

four

Cam doesn't sleep on airplanes. Never has, as far back as he can remember, from the days when he knew nothing more about them than that he'd be flying them someday to the days when he knew he could probably fly them better than the guy who was actually in the cockpit. He likes being awake for the whole thing, likes weighing the skill of the pilot's hands against the way he would do it, even though he's never flown something as big and clunky as a whale of a jet. 

Never will, now. His legs are good enough to get him from point A to point B, most of the time -- on a good day -- but there's a ticking time bomb at the base of his spine, and three different doctors have pronounced his hodgepodge of dysfunctions to be the "organic, functional, or structural disease, defect, or limitation" covered by the FAA regs, no matter how much he begged. Grounded. For life, until and unless he finds someone who'll take him up as second seat and pass him the stick on the sly once they're already airborne. 

Hurts a little bit less as time goes by, but not enough that he thinks it'll ever stop hurting at all. 

Cam handled the ticket purchase, but the seats printed on their boarding passes aren't the ones he selected (bulkhead row, for extra legroom; he doesn't meet FAA regs for exit-row seating now either, and just because flight crews rarely enforce the regs, it doesn't mean he feels okay with forcing someone to overlook something that should be part of their job). He's just gearing up to pitch a temper fit at the poor lady behind the counter when JD hooks his chin over Cam's shoulder and hums lightly. "Merry Christmas," JD says in his ear.

Cam looks at the seat assignment again. They're first-class seats. Bigger seats, more leg room. Cam's been flying coach to and from DC, when he has to travel. Saves money, since they're not going to be comfortably in the black for a good while yet. JD's never said a word to indicate he notices how badly being shoved in coach makes Cam's legs ache, but of course he would have noticed.

So Cam does all he can do, which is to say thank you with good grace, or as close to it as he can muster this near to a commercial flight, and politely decline the ticket counter lady's offer of wheelchair assistance through security. It's a point of pride -- and stubbornness -- that he will make it down to the gate on his own two feet and moving under his own power, and JD, Cam thinks, understands. 

JD takes Cam's combined laptop case and carryon, slings it over the other shoulder from his own -- oh, Cam could grow to hate him for that casual grace, if it wasn't clear JD didn't ever mean to rub it in -- and takes up his usual position: one step behind Cam, just to the left, watching Cam's flank for thoughtless passersby and ready to take the one step forward necessary to let Cam grab on to him if he needs to.

"You didn't need to do that," Cam says, as they head on up to the security line. The TSA agent waves them to the priority queue; it's one small mercy. 

"You won't let me pay rent," JD says simply.

Cam doesn't sleep on airplanes: never has. But JD presses a handful of pills on him when they get settled at the gate to wait for boarding call, and he swallows them down without any of the usual protests about how the pain's not too bad and he doesn't need the drugs, because clearing security and then walking nearly a mile to the gate is enough to cut through the bullshit without even trying. Cam doesn't do pre-board (pride, _stubbornness_ , same thing, really) but they're in the first boarding group anyway, and first class passengers get offered drinks while steerage is boarding. 

Cam orders JD a double Jack and Coke (because there's no way in hell the flight crew will believe he's twenty-one) and then winds up drinking half of it himself, silent concession that yeah, the pain really is that bad, and yeah, he really is starting to build up the tolerance his pain management doctor warned him about. Mixing booze and narcotics is a dumb idea, but he's had dumber. He's asleep before they even hit cruising altitude. 

He wakes up with his iPod earbuds in his ears playing _La Traviata_ at barely-noticeable levels, just enough to cover up the soft buzz of conversation from the other passengers and the hum of the engines. He hadn't even realized he'd packed the iPod; he probably hadn't packed it himself. JD's head is on his shoulder. For a minute, groggy, he thinks JD is asleep, but JD doesn't sleep on airplanes, either. JD's just using him as a pillow while he reads.

As always, JD knows the second Cam's awake; he sits up and nudges the plastic cup that's sitting on the armrest shelf between them. Cam stretches the kink out of his neck, tugs the earbuds out of his ears. "Opera?" he asks. Last time _he'd_ loaded the iPod, it had been Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd.

"I like opera," JD says. He nudges the drink again. Looks like soda, and it's still got ice cubes in it, which means it can't be too stale. Cam takes a sip and nearly chokes. Not just soda. Looks like JD managed to charm a flight attendant into overlooking his baby face.

"You are a strange, strange man," Cam informs him. 

"Could have been worse," JD says, and turns the page. "Could have picked _Tosca_." 

They're not talking about any of it: the fight, the two days of silence, JD's astonishing monologue, the way Cam had been left sitting at the kitchen table gaping at him until JD had smiled that curious sad smile and said that they'd be late for their flight. Won't talk about any of it, Cam thinks, not until it comes up again, or something happens that means they have to deal with it. It's not precisely avoidance. It's more, Cam thinks, the fact that it took JD two days to work up the courage to say it at all, and the only way he could say it was to say it in one fell swoop, and the fallout and the implications are just going to have to wait until they have a spare week or two to tunnel through them.

Cam's kind of okay with that. Kind of. He's got a host of things he's saving up to say in return, but he's not stupid enough to think that the Mitchell family homestead in the throes of Christmas insanity is the time or the place to say them. They'll keep.

So he takes the bickering as it's intended: as a touchstone of familiarity, as JD's way of showing care, as love shown by deeds and not by words. "Yeah, yeah," he says. Can't resist yanking JD's chain a bit; he adds, "'And there _La Traviata_ sighs another, sadder song.'"

JD raises an eyebrow; Cam's managed to surprise him. "We're going to North Carolina at Christmas-time," he says. "Not Kew at lilac-time."

"It isn't far from London," Cam says, deadpan, and is rewarded when JD actually cracks up. "Whatcha reading?"

JD sticks a finger in the book to hold his place and turns the cover to face Cam. It's a Clive Cussler book, one that someone had brought Cam as something to do during his convalescence and Cam had never gotten around to throwing out. Cam snorts. "Surprised you didn't wake me up by shouting at it."

"It was there," JD says. "Not too bad, at least. Better than Clancy would have been."

JD's probably read everything else in the apartment at least once. Maybe twice. Cam wouldn't have ever expected O'Neill to be the bookworm type; maybe O'Neill isn't. Maybe that's something JD's been cultivating since they split. 

"We should build some more bookshelves," Cam says. It's not a non sequitur in his head, but he expects JD to give him another raised eyebrow at it anyway. JD doesn't, though. JD's usually able to follow Cam's leaps of conversation. It's one of the things Cam values most about having him around.

"No room for them," JD says. "Not really."

Cam hums. "Bet we could shove around some furniture and make some room somewhere," he says. "You're probably itching to get some new stuff to read."

"Library does me fine," JD says. 

But Cam's considering. They could move the couch to the other wall, shove over the coffee table, pull the armchair up under the windows. Wouldn't be able to eke out much room, but there'd be enough. Have to be custom-built, really, to the exact dimensions, and that'll be more of a bitch than it would have been back when Cam could have swung the hammer himself. But JD's no slouch with his hands. They'll have to find somewhere to work, but maybe Mrs. Chaisorn will let them use the alley back behind the building; that would work fine if it doesn't rain.

And he realizes, right then, that he's thinking of things as though JD will, without question, be sticking around, and that thought eases something in his gut, something he hadn't been conscious of being tense. Yeah. They'll get through this. He still needs to apologize, and he still needs to make sure that JD knows precisely why he was so upset. But there's time, still.

"How far out are we?" he asks. He knows JD's been paying attention.

"Not far," JD says. "We started descent about five minutes ago; captain'll be announcing it soon enough." 

JD's not bad at flying under someone else's hands -- the sky was never his lover the way she was Cam's, Cam thinks. For him, flight was a means to an end, not the end itself. But old habits die hard, and he knows JD keeps his awareness turned on and turned up when he's flying, whether it be as pilot or passenger. They're both grounded, in a way. And both by their bodies. Cam from his injuries, and JD from his calendar age. 

So Cam doesn't say a word, just nods. He digs under the seat in front of him for his carryon, pulls out yarn and needles -- just a few more rows to go on the baby blanket, now, and it won't be the first time he's washing and blocking a gift at the eleventh hour. He's thoroughly sick of the pattern; he usually is at this point, but this one more than most. It's a simple pattern, and he's limbered up skills gone rusty and ready to pick up something more complex. Time for a visit to the yarn shop while they're back home, he thinks. JD could use some socks.

The timing works out well enough; he's onto the garter stitch border at the end just as they finish taxiing up to the gate. What with one thing and another, it takes them a good hour and a half to get through the airport, baggage claim, and car rental. JD fishes out the iPod again, along with the short-range transmitter gizmo that broadcasts it over the car radio, once they're in the car. Cam finishes up the last of the blanket edging in the car by touch just as the sun finishes going down. 

They don't talk. The music's too loud, and Cam thinks that's probably by design, but he doesn't much mind. He listens to JD singing along with _Rigoletto_ instead. JD's voice hasn't finished settling yet, Cam knows; the baritone parts that he figures O'Neill wouldn't have had problems with sit wrong in JD's range. But it's a powerful voice anyway, and Cam thinks there's something to the fact that JD will sing where Cam can hear. 

When they get to the house, there's the usual chaos and confusion. For just a second when Momma comes to greet them, Cam thinks he can see something moving in her eyes, something he can't read. Was she wondering if JD would come back, he wonders? Was she assuming that, duty to the family done, Cam would avoid bringing his partner back home again?

Well, he hadn't even considered for as much as a minute not bringing JD back with him this time, no matter how uncomfortable it might be. They're a unit, now, even if it's not always natural for either of them, and his family's just going to have to get used to it. He won't let anyone make him be ashamed.

Still. Momma steers them back to the peach bedroom again, and Cam's still feeling the lingering aftermath of the drugs (and the booze), but he also knows what's expected of him. He gives JD his very best _nos morituri te salutant_ look and heads off to the kitchen to start on the pies.

Two days away from Christmas supper and the kitchen's already full up with people working on one thing or another. But it's a big kitchen, and it -- like so much of the house -- is accessable in a quiet and unshowy way. Cam settles himself in a chair at the low part of the counter and rests his cane against the wall. JD rests his hands on Cam's shoulders and digs his thumb into one of the particularly bad knots. "Tell me what to fetch," JD says, "and I'll fetch it."

With JD as legs, the baking goes faster. Stella's glad to see them; apparently some of the tips JD gave her at Thanksgiving have her whole damn unit set to "white mutiny", which is driving her idiot CO up the wall and down again in a way that he can't even yell at anybody about, which of course doesn't seem to be stopping him. Skipper -- one half of the Skipper-and-Spencer matched set of twins, both Air Force intelligence, both involved in something they can't talk about and nobody pries -- peels the apples for the pies and chimes in now and then with a well-placed bit of advice. Cam catches JD watching Skipper out of the corner of his eye. He's not sure what the look on JD's face portends; he wonders if Skipper and Spence might be getting a knock on the door from the SGC sooner or later. 

By the time he's built a baker's dozen of pies -- they'll all be inhaled in thirty seconds or less once they're on the table, and everyone will be praising Cam's baking skills to high heaven at the same time they're cursing him for not having made double -- he's worn straight through, but being around family always makes him feel soothed. He's thumping down the hallway to hit the bathroom (the kitchen bathroom's occupied) when the sound of his cane echoing off the hardwood floor is suddenly doubled; he turns his head to see his father studying him, unsmiling.

"You busy right now, Cameron?" his father asks, and Cam swallows against the sudden lump in his throat and shakes his head.

His daddy brings him back to the den, and Uncle Bayliss and Uncle Roy take one look at his daddy's face and clear right out with whatever excuse comes to mind first. Cam settles himself in the easy chair across from his daddy and waits for the ax to fall. 

"You know your momma and I love you," his father starts, and that's always a bad sign. 

Cam nods his head, though. "I know that," he says. "And I love you too."

His father nods. In some families, it'd be a heartfelt declaration; in theirs, it's just a simple fact of life. "We're worried about you, son," his father continues. "Your momma and I. Cooped up in that apartment halfway across the country, with nothing to keep you sane."

"Not nothing," Cam says. It leaps out of his mouth before he can stop it; he's doing his best to keep from rubbing his father's nose in the fact of JD. The family's gotten over what little prejudice might have been lurking in the corners. Doesn't mean they want to know details.

But all his daddy does is nod. "You say he's good for you, and I won't contradict that. But it's not healthy for you to be alone like that. We'd like you to consider moving back here."

For a second, Cam can't tell whether the "you" is singular or plural. "I --" he starts, but his father holds up a hand.

"Not the house," his father says. "You won't do that, and I understand why. We raised you boys to be independent. But there's no shame in wanting to be close to your family, and I know there's nothing holding you out there." 

_Not anymore_ , Cam can hear, lurking underneath. He's still not sure whether his father means just him, or him-and-JD. They've built JD a careful cover story, and they've stuck to it, and JD's cover story has him just as free of ties as Cam is. 

But either way, something's sitting wrong. "We're doing just fine for ourselves," Cam says. 

His daddy sighs. "For now," he says. "Cameron -- you know I've never held with prying into your affairs, and I'm not gonna start now. But what happens when that boy gets tired of you and moves on? He's young, and you're --" 

Cam's throat closes over, because he knows his daddy's about to come out with some polite euphemism for "crippled", and he'll take that from his father like he wouldn't take it from just about anybody else in the world, but that doesn't mean he has to like it. "You can stop right there, sir," he says, and there's a cold pit of rage in his stomach that he didn't realize until that very second. "Because first of all, I'm more than capable of taking care of myself if I have to, and second of all, he's not going anywhere."

His father sighs. "You say that now," he starts, but Cam's already on his feet, because if there's one thing in this world he's sure of, it's the fact that even if JD couldn't live with him anymore, even if whatever the hell it is that they have flames out and crashes into the ice, JD wouldn't leave him without making sure he's settled. It's just what he is.

"I know you and Momma are looking out for me," Cam says, and it's a struggle to keep his voice even. "But I've got everything under control. And if you take the time to get to know JD, you'll know that he's not what --"

He stops, horrified. He was about to say "not what he seems", and Lord almighty, he must be pissed off, because he knows full well that's the kind of thing you can't say to anyone in the family and not expect the Inquisition. He's out of practice with keeping secrets, and that's a bad and dangerous thing to find out when the secrets you've got in your head are the sort of things worlds live on and die over.

"Cameron," his daddy says, but Cam's shaking his head. 

"No," he says. "I can't have this conversation with you right now. Sir. I just -- I can't."

Too close on the heels of thinking his whole world had been turned upside down and shaken out; too close to home, too close to his own fears. He can't blame his daddy for thinking it, but he can damn well blame him for saying it, and he can't just sit here and listen. 

"Cameron," his daddy says again, but Cam turns his back -- first time ever -- and walks straight out. Into the kitchen, where JD looks up from the middle of whatever he's debating with Skipper, takes one look at Cam's face and goes a little pale at what he sees there. Out the back door, onto the back porch, past Great-Aunt Suzette drowsing in the rocking chair, and down the swell of grass (watching his feet, watching the cane-tip, careful, _careful_ ) to the creek.

There aren't any footsteps behind him, but he's tuned to JD's wavelength, which is why it doesn't startle him when JD says, straight in his ear, "Is it something to talk about, or something to be quiet over?"

"They want me back here," Cam says. He's fighting back tears and rage all at once, and it's a bad headspace to be in. Bad and dangerous. "They want me to move back here, because they're worried about me, and because they think you're going to up and realize any day now that you're too damn young to bind yourself to a _cripple_ \--"

JD's voice goes cold. Cam thinks that if he turned his head, if he looked at JD's face, there'd be a look there to rival Momma at her fiercest. "Fuck a whole lot of that," JD says, neat and clipped, and then Cam does turn his head, because JD's striding back across the grass and up towards the house.

Cam scrambles to catch up, but JD's not holding back his pace the way he usually does, and Cam can't move that fast anymore. The porch door slams behind him as JD breezes through it, and the way JD's moving, it's a mercy the thing didn't come screaming off the hinges. 

"Cam," Peggy says, as Cam comes limping into the kitchen. "Is everything --"

He slashes a hand in midair and she hushes. "Which way did he go?" he asks. 

She bites her lip. "Den, I think," she says, and hell, that's what Cam feared, but he squares his shoulders and keeps on going.

Turns out he didn't need to ask; he can hear JD from three rooms away. JD's not shouting. If JD were shouting, Cam would rest a little easier. JD's just got so much power behind his voice that Cam thinks it might shake the house down to foundation. "--think that I am using him, think that I'm going to _abandon_ him --"

Cam's daddy's voice is quieter, but Cam can still hear it. He rests his hand on the doorknob, debating whether to walk in or not. "Now, son --"

" _Don't you call me that_ ," JD snarls, and yeah, shit, fuck, this is about the worst possible way this conversation could go down. Cam opens the door. 

Two heads whip around to stare at him. His daddy's still in the chair; JD's standing in front of him, hands on hips, practically crackling with fury. There's more than a little bit of O'Neill in him right now -- in the set of his shoulders, in the iron of his spine, in the line of his jaw. It's a mature anger, a righteous anger. The fury of an honorable man who's had his honor called into question.

JD opens his mouth, to say something to Cam. Cam doesn't want to hear it. "Stop," he says. "Stop. Both of you."

"Cameron," his daddy says, just as JD says, "Mitchell --"

"I said _stop it_ ," Cam says, and maybe he's not JD, maybe he didn't spend years and seasons learning how to command men with nothing more than the lifting of a finger and the judicious application of a well-timed word, but he knows enough of it to put steel into his voice. They both shut up.

Into the silence, Cam says, "This is not the time or the place for this."

He sees JD's concession of _you're right_ in the twist of JD's lips, but JD doesn't back down. "I'm not going to let you be insulted in your own home."

"No insult meant," Cam's daddy says. "We just want --"

JD's head snaps around so quickly that it makes Cam wince. Whatever's in his face makes Cam's father pull back a little, just one single involuntary flinch. "To tell your own son that his choices aren't valid," JD says. "To tell him that he's misguided, or blind, or just plain wrong."

Cam lifts both his hands to his temples to rub at the migraine he can feel starting there. His cane slides away from where he's propped it against his hip and hits the floor. JD is there before the clack of its dropping has even faded; he picks it up and holds it. Cam can see his daddy taking stock, taking it all in.

"This is not the time for this," Cam repeats. Stronger this time. "Dad. I know you're trying to help. I know you're worried. But there's --"

No good way to finish that sentence, is what there is. Cam's daddy shakes his head. "Son, you're a grown man, and you can make your own decisions. I just want you to know --"

"We are both grown men," JD says. This close, Cam can feel him vibrating with the fury, vibrating with the need to be understood. "I don't care what you think I look like --"

"JD," Cam says. A warning. JD doesn't pay him a lick of attention.

"--or what you think you've figured out about me, but you need to know that this is not the first time I've --"

" _Jack_." The name falls from Cam's lips before he tells it to, and for a second, he thinks: _oh, fucking hell,_ because JD's frozen solid in place and really, he's had enough of careless words hurting them both for one week. For one _year_. 

But it got JD to shut up before he said something he shouldn't. Cam's daddy is looking back and forth between the two of them. He doesn't know one lick of what's going on, but a blind man could tell that there's one king hell of a history there. 

JD's eyes are hot on Cam's face. Cam watches as he closes those eyes, takes one deep breath and lets it out so slowly that it seems to take forever. When he opens those eyes again, they're calmer. Not calm, but calmer. 

"Yeah," JD says, to all the things Cam can't say out loud. "Yeah. I know. I won't."

Then he turns his head again to stare at Cam's daddy. "Be glad he's here," he says. Calm this time. Quiet. It's worse than the anger was; it always is. "Because I'm grateful to you for the hospitality, but you've managed to insult us both. And that only happens once."

Cam's left standing, awkward and uncomfortable, as JD stalks out of the room. His father blows out a breath. "Well," he says. "That's --"

"I'm sorry, Dad," Cam says. "I --"

Neither of them finish their sentences. Neither of them quite know what to finish their sentences with.

"You love him, don't you," Cam's daddy says, after another minute of silence.

It gets easier to face with repetition, Cam supposes. "Yes, sir," he says. Quiet, but heartfelt. "He's good to me."

"You're lying to us," his daddy says, and Cam's heart -- none too steady -- breaks a little. "About most of this. Aren't you."

"Don't make me answer that question," Cam says. Heartsick, aching. "Daddy, I can't say a damn word about it. I've already said more than I should. We both have. I swore an oath."

His father sighs. "Cameron Everett Mitchell," he says. More sad than upset. "All I want is for you to be settled."

There are tears burning in Cam's eyes, but he's not going to let them rise up. "I am. We are. It's going to be all right. I swear to you. It's going to be all right."

His father closes his eyes. For a minute, Cam thinks he looks old. Then he realizes his father's only a few years older than JD is, and it makes him shiver.

"Go get some sleep," his daddy says. "We'll talk about this after Christmas." 

"Yes, sir," Cam says, and avoids the eyes of everyone he passes -- everyone who overheard every damn lick of the fight; no such thing as a secret in this house, really -- on his way back to the bedroom.

He isn't expecting JD to be there -- is imagining JD out running, circling the creek maybe, or down the side of the road halfway to town. But JD's sitting crosslegged on the bed, his back up against the headboard, his hands arranged perfectly in his lap, breathing deeply and evenly with his eyes closed.

Cam shuts the door behind him. When he turns back around, JD's got one eye open, watching him. Cam doesn't say anything, just thumps over to his side of the bed and starts stripping down.

"I'm sorry," JD finally says. 

"It's all right," Cam says. He sits down on the edge of the bed, hard and heavy. After a second, JD's hand comes to rest on the nape of his neck, and Cam bows his head against the weight of it. 

"I won't say I shouldn't have come," JD says. "But I shouldn't have lost my temper."

"It's all right," Cam repeats. It's not. Not exactly. But there isn't anything else he can say, and he knows JD will hear what he means by it.

JD takes a deep breath. "What he said pissed me off because I almost did walk out on you," he says. Quick and fast, a hot rush of words to Cam's back. "I took a look at how big it was and how much it scared me, and I wanted to take off and never look back. You scare the shit out of me. And the first three impulses were to get the hell out, and it took me everything I had to walk back into the apartment two nights ago and climb back into bed with you like everything was going to be all right. But I wouldn't have been able to live with myself if I just threw this away. You need to know that."

They'd started off this morning with JD sitting up on the kitchen counter, his feet tucked up under him with that boneless grace, talking half to the coffeepot and half to his hands. And Cam had known better than to interrupt, known better than to even look at him, because he'd known the kindest thing he could have done was to give JD room to say whatever he needed to say. The content of what JD's saying now isn't a surprise, not after this morning. The fact that JD's saying it is.

"I'm glad you didn't," Cam says, because JD's paused and it's the kind of pause that needs something to fill it, not the kind of pause you wait through. He's starting to recognize the difference, with JD. They've both still got a lot of learning to do, but nothing good comes easy. 

"I think I am too," JD says. "I think it might be the first time I didn't."

Cam does turn around at that. Not to check JD's face -- he knows that JD's face is going to say exactly what JD wants it to -- but because he wants to touch, and he doesn't want to touch what he can't see. He's had enough and well past enough of conversations like these for the day, and somehow he doesn't see JD objecting to a change of subject either. So he says, making it as light as possible, "It's okay if you want to walk out on me. As long as you know that if you actually do it, I'll hunt you down and kill you."

It takes JD a second to realize what Cam's said, and then he's laughing. Nothing more than a soft chuff, but it makes Cam happy to hear it anyway. "Duly noted." He scrubs a hand over his face. "Can this day be over now?"

"Yeah," Cam says. He flicks off the bedside lamp. Just as he's about to stretch out under the covers, he remembers his evening dose of meds and sighs. 

"I've got it," JD says, before Cam can get up. JD never loses track of the time, no matter what timezone they're in. JD's better at keeping track of Cam's needs than Cam is. Cam hopes his daddy has taken note, that his daddy sees that JD's more than just a pretty face and a nice smile. But he'll deal with that tomorrow, or after Christmas, and by then, maybe he'll have figured out a way to explain things to his daddy that won't sound crazy or spill national secrets all over family problems. Time still to think about it. Later.

JD stands next to Cam and hands over the pills he dug out of the bottom of Cam's carryon. "When we get back," he says, and then stops. 

Cam puts his hands on JD's hips and tugs him in, closer. He needs to touch. "Yeah?" he prompts. 

Whatever it is that's on JD's mind, it's big. "Nothing," JD says, and then stops himself. "No. You said I need to talk. Okay. When we get back. Let's talk about where we do want to move." His eyes look scared, but it doesn't show in his voice. "Anywhere. I don't care. I just --" Deep breath. "I want a home. I want us to have a home. Not just a place where we sleep."

For a minute, Cam can't breathe against the fullness spreading out inside him. JD's eyes are searching his face. When Cam doesn't say anything, JD turns away. "Nevermind. Dumb thing to say. Forget I brought it up."

"No," Cam blurts out. Catches his fingers in the band of JD's underwear, pulls him right back to where he was. "No. I --" 

He's supposed to be the one who can talk about his feelings, but this, this is fifteen layers all at once. But the one that wins is the one that JD's described as the big needy pit: need for love, need for connection, need to laugh or cry or just sit down and shake for a good ten minutes before anything gets decided. God, his life is fucking insane. Insane and terrifying and beautiful and he doesn't know how to even begin to approach it all.

He settles. They're not the words he wants, but they're the words he can find. "Yeah," he says. "Let's do that. Let's keep building ourselves a lifetime."

There's relief in JD's eyes. There are things floating around in Cam's head, bits and pieces of understanding that don't connect up to anything else -- the fact that JD doesn't love lightly, the way that tethers and ties don't chafe so hard when they're ones you put on yourself, the way that JD understands what home means to Cam, the way love isn't about what you can get from somebody else, it's about what you can give to them. They're all important, but now's not the time to try to make any of them fit into place. Now's the time to wrap his arms around JD's waist and just hold on: hold on like the world's going to end any second, and this might be the only thing that keeps them from ending with it.

JD's hand comes to rest on Cam's hair. _I love you_ , it says. Wordless. Confident. Cam takes heart in the touch, in the fact that he knows how to read it.

When he looks up, JD is looking back down at him. He catches Cam's hand in his and pulls Cam's fingertips up to rest on the upside-down V crowned with a halo that's limned at the hollow of his throat. Cam can feel the pulse leaping underneath his touch. 

"This one means 'home'," JD says, and in his voice is a beginning.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cam's cousins Spencer and Skipper are a little too perceptive for their own fucking good. (It helps that JD has been baiting them.) Cam's brother Ash just wants to make sure Cam's okay.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Originally [posted](https://synecdochic.dreamwidth.org/146720.html) 2007-08-22.)
> 
> This is where we start to see the glimmer of the plot, even though I was still insisting I wasn't writing this.

## 

five

Cam hadn't thought about midnight church services. In the Mitchell clan, it doesn't matter what religion you've chosen, what creed you currently follow and what church you attend regularly (if you do; he doesn't, hasn't for a while, even before the accident; too hard to find one that matches his beliefs). On Christmas Eve, you put on your very best clothing and you pile into the car with what feels like more Mitchells each year, and you head on down to Christ Church United Methodist, and you sit in the pew and you fold your hands and when the hymns come around, you sing pretty. 

It's something he's been doing every year for his whole life, the years he could make it back home for the holidays, and even the ones he couldn't, he'd close his eyes and think himself there at about the right time. Hell, last Christmas, he'd been just coming off the tail end of a hell of a morphine habit, struggling like hell just to walk again, and he'd still played the Christ Church choir's Christmas CD just to feel like he was connected. 

JD hadn't said a word when Cam had told him to pack a suit and tie; Cam hadn't heard JD cop to religious beliefs at all, not once, but he seems to know what to do when they step into the church. That's not the part that makes Cam pause. No, it's the looks that everyone's giving him, the whispers he can't help but hear. _That poor Mitchell boy_ , and _such a pity_ and _I wonder who_ , and it's just another jagged piece of glass on the symphony that is his nerves right now.

He grits his teeth. JD casts a glance at him underneath lowered lashes, out of the corners of his eyes, and Cam knows JD can see it isn't pain that's causing it. But JD crooks his arm anyway, as poised and as polished as a gentleman offering a lady his escort, and Cam tucks his fingers into the curve of JD's elbow, because he'll be damned if he pretends to be anything other than what they are.

The pews are hard and wooden, but the Christ Church Ladies' Auxiliary must have done well enough with their bake sales for the past two years, because the padded cushions are new. Cam sits with JD to his left and Uncle Al to his right. Momma and Daddy are a few heads on down. It's uncharitable and unChristian to keep up a cold war on Christmas Eve, but Cam's still furious in a way he can't explain and which probably isn't fair. All he knows is that for the first time in years, what Momma and Daddy mean as nothing more than good advice and a word of caution has gotten him so pissed off that he can't even think straight.

JD's still pissed off too, but JD's anger is a cold and stunning thing, the kind of thing that manifests in sharp-edged manners that'd put Great-Aunt Aggie to shame. JD had sat at Cam's feet in the living room as they'd all gone around in circles that afternoon, opening present after present -- just the first half, on Christmas Eve; the rest is on Christmas Morning, along with Santa's contributions, else they'd never get to supper, much less to church on time. And JD had smiled, and JD had laughed, and JD had said all the right things to all the people who'd gifted him and gotten warm responses to the gifts he'd chosen. 

But throughout it all, JD had been touching him -- a hand hooked around his ankle, a foot resting on top of his, his head on Cam's knee. And every time Momma or Daddy had looked over, JD had known, and looked up and met their eyes. And Cam couldn't see JD's face from where he was sitting, but he could see the lines of JD's shoulders, and JD's whole body had been screaming out a challenge.

They make it through services without blood being spilled, at least. The peace always takes ten, fifteen minutes at Christ Church -- it's half kiss-of-peace, half social hour, even when the church isn't packed to bursting with all the family that's usually scattered wide. Cam pastes a smile on his face that feels more unnatural than not and kisses ladies' cheeks and shakes men's hands over and over again. He introduces JD as his partner. Let them draw what conclusions they may.

When Momma passes, leans in and hugs him tight before he can decide whether or not to pull away -- and oh, he hates thinking that he might have -- she says, right in his ear, "You stop glaring at people, Cameron Everett; you are not too big for me to turn over my knee." He bites back whatever he was going to say to that and watches her hug JD without hesitation. He can't overhear what she says to JD, but his face, when they separate, is contemplative.

Afterwards, once everyone's back in the house and out of the church clothes, once the kids have been put in their pajamas and put to bed whereever there's room and the more morning-inclined adults have gone with them, once the house has been certified Santa-safe and all the hiding places raided for the presents various parents have been stashing here for weeks and months, Cam and JD wind up in the kitchen again. Cam's hungry -- he couldn't eat much at supper, waiting for the other shoe to drop -- and JD's always starving, no matter how much he eats. 

Cam makes himself a sandwich out of the leftover turkey (Christmas Eve is turkey; Christmas Day is ham) and brings it over to the table. They're not the only people still up, but the house is quieting down. Mostly just the teenagers left, in the rumpus room in front of the Playstation. Everyone else knows that morning's going to come too fast.

Cam's just about to open his mouth and say something like "thank you for going through that with me" when Skipper and Spence come through the swinging doors, in identical Air Force t-shirts and sweats and wearing identical determined expressions. For a second Cam thinks they're just chasing coffee, but Spence (the quiet one) takes up a position at the door (he's tall enough to see over the swinging doors, see if anyone's coming, see if anyone can overhear) and Skipper (who's always been the frontman) sits down across from JD at the table.

Cam's mouth is full, so he doesn't have a chance to say anything before Skipper starts, "You don't exist." 

It makes Cam choke. JD doesn't bat an eyelash, just reaches over to pound between Cam's shoulderblades. "Funny," JD says, once Cam's wiped his streaming eyes on his t-shirt. "I could have sworn Descartes hadn't lived in vain."

Skipper's lips twist quickly before he gets control of the smile. "Spence lifted your ID from your wallet just before church." 

Cam puts his coffee mug down with a click -- how _dare_ they -- but JD puts a hand on his wrist. "Funny kind of hospitality," JD says.

"He's our family," Spence says, simply, from the doorway. 

"And no," Skipper says, shifting his eyes to Cam, "we're not going to say a damn word to Aunt Sassy about the actual date of birth that's on there, but we're pretty sure that your whole story is bullshit straight through. We're just not sure how." He looks back at JD. "I spent two hours straight talking with you yesterday, and in that two hours, I heard you giving Stella advice that my CO'S CO wouldn't have been able to deliver. I tried you on Air Force _and_ Marine shorthand, and you didn't blink. I compared Milosevic to Ceausescu and you didn't stop and ask me who, you told me that you'd always thought Kim Jong-il fit the role better. And you're really good at keeping a poker face, but when I cut myself peeling those apples and started cussing in Arabic, you understood every damn word."

"Skipper," Cam says. JD's hand, still on his wrist, squeezes.

"I'm sorry, Uncle Cam," Skipper says. "But there's something funny going on here."

There is, and the funny thing that's going on is that JD doesn't make mistakes like that. JD gets up from the table. For a second, Cam wonders if that's it, jig's up. But all JD does is cross the room and pick up the phone from the wall.

He dials from memory; Cam's not close enough to see the numbers. Skipper and Spence watch the whole process. Spence is cutting off the kitchen door, Cam realizes. Skipper is sitting closest to the door out to the porch. Cam's getting slow; he hadn't even noticed. JD would have noticed. JD always notices that kind of thing.

"It's me," JD says, to whoever picks up at the other end of the phone. "Got two names for you. Beauregard and Spencer Griffith. Detached duty to Force Recon. Give Hank a call and tell him to send out the boys with the briefcases."

Cam's not sure who's more surprised, him or Spence and Skipper. "You're working with the _Marines_?" Cam blurts out, just as Skipper sits straight up and says "how the _fuck_ do you know that?"

JD ignores them both. "Because I _said so_ , Carter," he snaps into the phone, and Cam blinks again. "Because I'm not calling him myself and going through the song-and-dance about who the hell I am, and because I'm not going to be able to impersonate _him_ on the phone until my voice finishes fucking settling, all right?" Pause. "Because they made me, and I'd like to be able to explain myself sometime this century. And because Hank's probably having trouble finding his own ass with two hands and a flashlight right about now, and could use a few more brains in the machine." Pause. "Yeah."

JD crosses the room and hands the phone to Cam. "Phone," he says, unnecessarily, and drops back into his chair, where he completely ignores everyone else in the room and picks up Cam's sandwich to finish it.

"Um," Cam says, into the phone. "Sam?"

"Why is he telling me to get General Landry to send recruiters out to talk to Skipper and Spence?" Sam demands. 

Cam closes his eyes. Really, he's had enough of the universe conspiring against him. He _has_ ; the thought of a year or so on a ranch in Montana with no contact with the outside world sounds damn good right about now. "Fine, and how are you?" he asks, because he can't think of any answer to that question that can possibly be overheard. Or even said on a non-secure line.

She pauses. "In the kitchen, huh?" she guesses. "And I'm guessing Skipper and Spence are sitting right there."

"Well, one's standing, but yeah." Cam closes his eyes and pinches the bridge of his nose. "And we're having one of those conversations."

"Hell," she mutters, which for Sam Carter is the equivalent of a three-minute tirade of expletives. "All right, fine. Tell him I'll talk to General Landry, but I can't promise anything. And for God's sake, don't let him say anything to anybody else. The IOC's been making noise about how we don't need the full program anymore, and Daniel's not here to keep them from getting ideas."

Cam's been out of the loop since his accident, and he wasn't too far into the loop to begin with. He's only dimly aware of all the political struggle that's always surrounded the Stargate program -- his clearance was never _quite_ high enough, no matter that O'Neill pulled a few strings and got him bumped up a couple of levels so he could find out what he nearly died for. But he knows enough to know that if Sam's worried, especially since she isn't even stationed at the Mountain anymore, it's something to be worried about. 

"Right," he says. "Gotcha. Lips zipped. Merry Christmas, baby."

"Merry Christmas," she says, but it sounds a little sour, and he regrets once again that he hasn't been there for her over the past too-damn-long. "Tell Momma I'll call tomorrow."

JD holds out a hand for the phone about half a second after Sam hangs up. Cam hands it over. He's beyond being surprised that JD knew the conversation was over; at this point, he'd be willing to believe that JD can read minds.

Skipper's still staring at them. "That was --" he starts, and then stops himself. Sam's been coming to Christmas with the family, on and off, for a good fifteen years, over half the twins' lifetimes; they'd been eleven when they first met her. She's "Aunt Sam" to them, just like Cam's "Uncle Cam"; ten years' age difference in this family is enough for a title of respect. Cam sees Skipper look at Spence, sees the wordless communication pass between them; they can hold whole conversations just by thinking at each other. 

"You're not going to believe me," JD says, mild and easygoing, as he hangs up the phone and claims the last end-scraps of the apple pie that's sitting on the counter. "But it really is an issue of national security. Nothing to worry about, Captain. Just very, very classified." He smiles, and in that smile, Cam can see the O'Neill of Air Force legend, the O'Neill who'd always come up in hushed tones whenever any group of pilots got togther and talk had turned to the men who jumped out of perfectly good airplanes and did God knows what once they hit the ground. The O'Neill Cam had always heard called _Batshit Jack_. "Even more classified than your current assignment."

Spence moves a little at the door, and Skipper's face goes pale underneath his freckles and his tan. "What do you know?" Skipper asks, low and urgent. "How do you know it?"

"He's my family," JD says, nailing Spence's intonations exactly, and Cam's gut might be churning, but it's still a comfort to hear.

And then the penny drops. "You little bastard," Cam says. It's half admiration, half irritation. "You set them up."

"Can't have you," JD says, talking straight to him. "But if they're smart enough to put together the hints I dropped, they're smart enough to be a good second choice."

It's a hell of a compliment. A _hell_ of a compliment. "Sam's gonna kill you," Cam says.

JD's lips curve. "She can try," he says. Underneath it is what JD's not saying, what Cam can hear: _she's been trying for years._

Spence is watching them carefully. "Okay," he says. "We're getting a tenth of the story. I get that. I really do." He rakes his eyes over JD, and Cam can see him adding things up. He turns to Cam. "This is something to do with your accident, isn't it."

Cam sighs. This is all adding up to be one giant mess. He's almost sorry he came home. "Can I plead the fifth?" he asks.

Spence nods. "Okay," he says again. "Come on, Skipper."

Skipper looks up. "Huh?"

"Come on. It's late." 

Skipper's the frontman, but Spence is the dominant twin: the one who makes all the decisions, the one who puts his foot down and can't be budged. If Spence is satisfied, they're done for now. Skipper makes an indescribable noise and gets up. He looks for a minute like he's going to say something, and then sighs and heads on out of the kitchen.

Spence looks at JD. "If you come from Aunt Sam's people," he says, quietly, "if you come from the same people who put Uncle Cam in that plane he crashed -- and I'm sorry, Uncle Cam, but your cover stories _suck rocks_ \-- then that explains some of it. Not all. But I'll keep Skipper from trying to dig too deeply. For now. Sir." He looks between them. "G'night." 

"G'night," Cam says, automatically, and then they're alone in the kitchen again.

"You want any of this?" JD asks, pointing his fork at the one bite left of apple pie. "And how come you never bake for me?"

Cam isn't biting. "You wanna tell me what the hell all of that was?" he says. It's not quite a request. 

But JD holds up a hand, and his expression says, without question, _wait_. "Is it the lack of space in the kitchen? I could drop part of the counter down to chair-height if you give me a good week or so to mess with it. Or we could just move. Gotta be the right house for us out there somewhere."

Cam's struck with a sudden urge to bang his head against the table until this headache stops. Of course, since it's a situational headache and not a physiological one, that might not be until they're on the airplane headed home. Maybe not even then. But, okay. JD wants him to wait, he'll wait, because there's a tattoo right underneath the neckline of JD's t-shirt that Cam knows the meaning of now, and Cam can still feel the way JD's pulse was beating underneath it. "I could just teach you how to bake, you know," he says. "You're still not fooling me with the incompetence thing."

"Still couldn't manage to turn out something as good as you can," JD says. Then, without raising his voice, without looking around, he says, "Wouldn't you agree?"

And damn, but Cam is getting rusty, because a voice comes from the other side of the open screen door to the outside. "Careful. He's a little sensitive about it; we've been teasing him for years." 

Cam turns his head. It's Ashton, standing there in his BDUs and carrying his duffel bag, looking like he's been dragged backwards through a sand dune for the past five days running. Which might be the God's honest, since Ash has been in Iraq with no hope of pardon as far as the eye could see for the past two years. Cam's up and hugging him before he can even finish the thought. He's lost weight, and he's added some tan, but it's still Cam's baby brother hugging him back.

"You look like hell," Cam finally says, pulling back.

"You're still older and uglier," Ash says. It'll never not be funny, but it's particularly nice to hear it now, when Ash could be wringing his hands about the accident instead. Not that Ash would; they're too much alike, really, and Ash would know that sympathy would be the worst thing possible. 

"You must be JD," Ash says, turning to hold out a hand. "Momma wrote about you."

Cam can only guess what Momma wrote. But JD takes Ash's hand and says something noncommittal but polite. 

"I didn't know you were going to be home," Cam said. "Thought you had another three months to go."

"Christmas miracle," Ash says. "Surprise, we're extending your tour another six months, but at least you get to go home and see your wife and kids before your baby forgets who Daddy is." His smile's a bit forced. "I've got until mid-January. I didn't want to call and let people know until I was sure it was going to happen." 

"I'll go wake up Cindy Lou," Cam says, but JD's already shaking his head and standing up.

"I'll get it," he says. "You stay put."

Ash watches him go. "Not what I would have expected for you," he finally says. 

And that's it; it's the last straw, it's the final nudge, it's the last comment Cam can take. "Will you just _mind your own fucking business_?" he snaps. 

Feels guilty the minute he snaps it, of course. Last thing a man needs when he walks into his own home for the first time in months is his cranky older brother taking his head off about something stupid. But Ash just makes a little tiny hmm noise. "Caught the last bit of what Spence was saying," Ash says, and really, it's a wonder anyone in this damn family ever manages to keep classified information classified; the whole damn family's too damn smart and too damn nosy for their own good. "You in any trouble you can't get out of?"

Because of course that's the question. Cam and Ash have gotten into a hell of a lot of trouble together over the years; the question isn't whether Cam's in trouble now. Ash knows trouble when he sees it. The question is whether Cam's going to need his baby brother at his back moving heaven and earth to help him get back out of it. 

So Cam just sighs. "Just that I'm moving to a couple of thousand of acres out in Montana with no other human beings in sight," he says. "I'll tell you the whole damn thing once you've gotten to kiss your wife and shower and sleep off the travel."

"Hold you to that," Ash says, and then Cindy Lou is rushing into the kitchen and into Ash's arms, squealing fit to wake the dead or at least the whole house, and Cam gets up to put on another pot of coffee, because they're probably going to need buckets.

Still, having Ash home is a blessing, and not just because it takes the heat off him for a little while. Means that there's one fewer unit they have to watch the dispatches for. The family's got ten in active combat right now, aside from the usual six or seven who are overseas but in friendly territory, and that's a lot of nervous fretting. 

The sun's already starting to kiss the sky when Cam and JD wind up back in the bedroom, and Cam's worn straight through, enough that he's pretty sure he's going to sleep through Santa and breakfast. He knows Momma will give him hell about it afterwards, but he hasn't been sleeping worth a damn this week and it's all catching up to him all at once. He can't go to sleep with some things left unsettled, though, so he doesn't lie down (if he lies down, he'll crash, and crash hard); he sits in the rocker and gives JD his very best penetrating stare. "Later yet?" he asks.

JD looks confused for a second, in the process of stripping down, and then the light dawns. "They hit one of the trip-wires I set up on my data. Anyone tries to run me through the MVA, through Social Security, or through the Air Force, I get a notice." His smile's rueful. "Wasn't intended to catch nosy family members. I was thinking more of the boys in the three-letter agencies when I set it up. But one of them triggered the MVA flag. My money's on Spence. And I know enough about the Mitchell stubbornness to know that they wouldn't let it drop, not unless they got answers, so --" He spreads his hands. "Bait. They took it. They'll do well at the SGC."

It makes sense. But Cam's still annoyed. "You didn't think to tell me?"

"Didn't get the chance." JD, down to boxers, crosses the room on cat feet and holds down his hands to help get Cam up. Cam eyes them for a minute, trying to decide if he wants to let this keep going until he works up a head of steam, and finally figures that he's had enough of shouting for a good long while and lets it go. He takes JD's hands. "I am sorry about that," JD adds, as an afterthought. "I didn't think of it."

"Next time, tell me," Cam says. He's not too sure if he's happy about the thought of more of his family at the SGC. Especially without Sam there to keep an eye on them. He's not stupid; he knows that whatever Spence and Skipper are up to (the damn weasels; they'd _claimed_ they were doing counter-terrorism in Germany -- then again, Cam had told the family he was testing experimental aircraft in Nevada, and that had made it damn hard to explain away the crash in Antarctica) is probably just as far from being a Sunday stroll in the park as serving on an active Gate team is. But still. There's a part of him that will always think that Stargate Command and all its associated operations has gotten enough from the Mitchell family, and it's a part of him he's ashamed of, but it's there nonetheless.

JD can read it, Cam thinks. JD puts a hand against his cheek and gives him that serious look, the one that says there are things stirring underneath those eyes that Cam probably won't ever fully understand. "They need good people," he says. "Now more than ever. I can't go back, and O'Neill won't. I still hear stories. Just a little, here and there. Carter's at Groom Lake, Daniel's on Atlantis, Teal'c's on Dakara. Landry's drowning. Push comes to shove, he'll roll, and then we're all fucked."

Cam shakes his head. "You said it wasn't your problem anymore."

"It'll always be my problem," JD says. "Even when it's not anymore. I left it with O'Neill, and I don't want it back, but that doesn't mean I don't have a duty to keep my eyes open. Sometimes being outside means that you can see things more clearly."

Cam sighs. He's tired straight down to the bone, and this is the kind of conversation you save for when you have your wits about you. But he can't demand honesty without giving honesty in return, so he says, "I don't like it. I don't like that you lied to me about staying in touch with people at the SGC, and I don't like thinking that you're thinking about going back."

"I told you I didn't lie to you, and I didn't." JD's voice is calm, too. Cam thinks he might be just as tired of the shouting as Cam is. "I don't hear things from Carter, or from anyone who's there right now. I've kept in touch with Hammond. He's not at the SGC anymore; he retired last year, even. But he stays in as a consultant, and he tells me what he thinks I need to know, because he recognizes that I can't walk away completely without knowing that what I helped build is in good hands." 

He takes a deep breath, lets it out. "Which it's not. Not completely, and there's nothing I can do about that. Hank Landry's a good man, and if it were any other command I'd say he's a damn fine choice. But I don't know what O'Neill was thinking. Maybe Hank was the best of bad choices, but he's still a bad choice. And the --"

Cam can see JD catch himself. It's late, and everyone else has gone to bed, and the walls are pretty thick. But some conversations you don't have in someone else's house. "The situation's more under control now than it ever was before," JD says, instead of _most of the snakes are dead_. "And I trust O'Neill to do the right thing when push comes to shove, but I'd rather it didn't get that far. And if that means grabbing two people who are fucking smart and fucking stubborn, who care enough about their people to risk breaking a whole hell of a lot of rules to make sure nothing's going down wrong, I'll do it. I'm sorry I didn't tell you. I'll try to remember next time. I'm out of the habit of ever telling someone what I'm doing and why. But I'm not thinking about going back, and I never have. It's not possible, and even if it were, I wouldn't do it. It'd mean too many compromises, and I'm done compromising."

And Cam sighs. He's been awake for far too long now, and it's been one rollercoaster ride after another for the past week, nonstop, and his head hurts and his back hurts and his legs, well, they _really_ hurt. "Promise me one thing," he says. 

JD's eyes are wary. "If I can."

"Promise me that anything you find out, you tell me." It isn't like he hasn't been worrying about things all along. It isn't like he hasn't spent enough nights sitting at the window, looking up at the stars and wondering whether there's something coming for them all that he isn't going to be there to help stop this time. It isn't like he hasn't spent nights staring into the blackness and wondering if he had a right to place his happiness and well-being above his duty to his country. To his _planet_. And in a way, it's almost a comfort to know that JD's been thinking the same thoughts.

JD is considering it carefully. Cam likes that about him, really; the way he won't ever make a promise that he doesn't think he can keep. JD's left one too many broken promises trailing behind him, Cam thinks. Or maybe it was O'Neill. Doesn't matter. "I'll tell you everything I can," JD says. 

And it's not quite the promise Cam's looking for, but it's close enough, and he's exhausted. He settles down in the bed, and after a pause, after studying Cam's face, JD comes squirming up against him to bury his face in Cam's shoulder. "Hell of a week," Cam says, after a pause while he breathes in the crisp clean scent of JD's hair. 

JD laughs softly. "Merry Christmas," he says.

"Not a family Christmas until someone has a messy meltdown all over everything," Cam says. "Just wish it wasn't us this year."

"We'll get through it," JD says. Unspoken is the undercurrent: _we can get through anything; I know that now._

Cam's already starting to drift off. Being horizontal has it all catching up with him. But he stays awake just long enough to murmur "yeah" before he succumbs to the pull of sleep.

Christmas Day is less awkward than Cam would have expected. Everyone's sleep-deprived and hazy, but Ash is the center of attention, and it does take some of the heat off of him and JD. Everyone's presents go over well. Cam winds up with a good hundred bucks in credits for the iTunes online music store, which is going to go to stuff that will by God replace the opera on the iPod. JD gets an afghan of his very own from Great-Aunt Claire, which is a surprise and more than a bit of a shock, because an heirloom afghan like that (knit out of handspun, stitch by painstaking stitch, on size 5 needles over months and months and months) is usually reserved for a wedding trousseau. 

Cam hadn't known Aunt Claire approved that firmly; she'd never said a word to indicate. But he knows she keeps one ahead, for whoever might be needing it, and she meets his eyes when JD opens the box and gives him one of those little Buddha smiles. With Gran'ma gone, Momma's the matriarch undisputed, the one who everyone listens to in matters of kith and kin. But Aunt Claire was Gran'ma's sister, and Momma knows how to read a sign.

The rumpus room's full of kids and toys and noise (batteries might not be included, but Momma lays in a stockpile right before Christmas) and the men have hied off to the den and the women to the back porch, when Ash frees himself up from his adoring family long enough to "suggest" Cam join him out on the front porch. Cam would rather front porch than getting thrown in the creek -- which is a likely outcome if Ash thinks Cam's avoiding him -- and so he goes. 

They settle down on the porch swing and Ash lights up a cigarette. He'd been trying to quit last time Cam saw him, but Cam doesn't say a word; he figures a man who's spent his past two years in a war zone is entitled to his few comforts. Ash smokes it half down before either of them say anything. It's nice to just sit outside with his baby brother and watch the world go by.

"Heard you and Dad got into it the other night," Ash finally says. 

"Hell," Cam says. "Gimme one of those."

He quit a good ten years ago, but there are times when he backslides, even when he hates himself for it afterwards when his mouth tastes like an ashtray for what feels like days. Ash hands over the pack and the lighter without commentary. Cam lights up; the first hit goes straight to his head the same way the oxycodone always used to. 

"Dad's just trying to look out for me," Cam finally says. 

"Uh-huh," Ash says. "Got your back up, I heard."

Ash was always the one to go toe to toe with Daddy; Cam was always the peacemaker. But they both know that Cam's the stubborn one. Ash's anger comes and goes like summer lightning, and when it's over, it's over and he's smiling sweet again. It takes a lot for Cam to hit his boiling point, but when he does, it lasts for a long damn time.

"Hell of a lot of things I wish I could tell them," Cam says. "Things'd make a lot more sense if I could."

Ash sets the swing to rocking with one foot. "Momma likes him," he says. "That's why she's worried."

The hell of it is, Cam knows. Cam knew that JD's exactly the type that the family would approve of before he even brought him here; it's the only reason he thought it might manage to work. If Spence or Skipper had brought JD along to stand up as partner -- not that they would have; the twins are straight as razors, girl in every port, and Cam's heard some things that make him think they trade in on the identical thing from time to time, the little perverts -- the family would have welcomed JD with open arms. He'd've been Mitchell before the end of the first visit.

But Momma likes him, and that's why Momma's worried. Because Momma knows what it costs, to stand up with someone who's as damaged as Cam is. Because Momma thinks JD is more-or-less exactly what he seems, a good boy with his life stretching out in front of him, and Momma would be thinking it wasn't fair for that boy to shackle himself to someone whose life is always and forevermore going to be defined by its limitations.

"It's all just one royal mess," Cam says. Because he can't say any of the rest of it. 

"That it is," Ash says, and there's sympathy in his voice.

They're quiet for a few more minutes. Cam smokes the cigarette down until there's half an inch left before the filter, field-strips the rest. Ash holds out a hand for the butt without having to be prompted and tucks it back into the pack. They both know better than to litter in Momma's bushes.

"He in it with you for the long haul?" Ash finally asks.

Cam's throat closes up. "All the way," he finally manages.

And Ash has his own firm opinions, which Cam's always known, but when Cam tells him something, he believes it. He nods. "Word of advice, then," he says. "I were you, I'd compromise. Settle somewhere where there's family to keep an eye on you. Not here. Somewhere one of the cousins or aunts or uncles can drop in and see you two together every now and then. Somewhere Momma and Daddy'll be able to get updates from to put their mind at ease."

It's always a little shocking to see his baby brother's gotten so damn smart. Cam rubs a hand over his face. "Yeah," he says. "Been thinking that already." 

"Austin's pretty nice," Ash says. 

And Momma trusts Uncle Al -- has to; he's her brother -- and the next closest outpost of family is Uncle Travis and Aunt Lorena out in west Texas a good eight hundred miles away. And Uncle Al hasn't come down one side or the other on the issue, but Cam's seen him laughing with JD and it wasn't just politeness. 

It's not a bad notion. Cam had taken the apartment in Colorado Springs before he'd realized he wasn't going to be able to go back to the SGC, even flying a desk, and he'd stuck it out afterwards because he couldn't think of anywhere else he'd rather be. The entirety of JD's tether to the material world, as far as Cam can tell, is one top-of-the-line laptop, one motorcycle (they still don't talk about where it came from), the rattiest Goodwill wardrobe you could possibly imagine with one or two top-quality monkey suits for contrast, and a stack of books Cam's pretty sure he'd be willing to walk away from.

They're quiet for a few minutes more. The sun's starting to go down; in another little while it'll be too chilly to sit out here without a jacket, but for right now, it's nice. Warm spell this Christmas-time. That'd be another thing in favor of Austin; no snow. Finally, Ash sighs. "Always thought you'd wind up with Sam, you know," he says.

Cam chokes a little. "Hell _no_ ," he manages, once the image of the two of them naked in the same bed manages to fade from behind his eyeballs; he'll be scarred for life, thank you so very much. 

Ash laughs a little, probably at the reaction he managed to provoke. "What?" he asks. "Good-looking woman, smart as hell, Momma already loves her. Hell, half the family was just biding time waiting for you to get off your ass and offer her a ring. Guess that's why you showing up with someone else in tow startled everyone a bit."

"She's like my _sister_ ," Cam protests. And if what he suspects is correct, she's had a torch burning for someone else for quite some time, and he's trying not to think about that, because that's something they're going to have to have out between the two of them sooner or later before it starts to fester.

Ash shrugs. "Doesn't mean we didn't think it," he says. "Didn't know you played for the other team."

"Complicated," Cam says. Because there are things you just don't tell your baby brother, no matter how close the two of you are.

"Usually is," Ash agrees, and then tucks his cigarettes back in his jeans pocket. "I'm gonna go and make sure the demon children haven't set anything on fire. Uncle Al's in the kitchen. Might wanna have a word with him about neighborhoods."

Cam narrows his eyes -- if Ash and Uncle Al hadn't cooked this up between the two of them, he doesn't know his brother. But Cam can't quite manage to get too annoyed about it. Ash means well, and the family's got a long tradition of meddling. "Might not be able to throw you in the creek myself anymore," he says, "but I've got a young hot boyfriend who bench-presses his own weight three times a week to be my legs for me."

And Ash grins, and all's right with the world. "He can try," he says, and steps inside.

Left alone on the porch, Cam watches the sunset and tries not to think of anything in particular. The last bits of purple are just fading behind the mountain when the screen door bangs and JD settles down on the swing next to him.

Last Cam saw, JD had been in the rumpus room, putting together toys and taking being climbed on with surprisingly good graces. "Hey," Cam says.

"Hey," JD says, and settles himself so his thigh's pressed up straight against Cam's. "You sick of people yet? We could probably make it through Tennessee and Kentucky and into Missouri before we had to stop for the night if we just flee now."

Cam laughs. "Four more days," he says. He knows JD isn't seriously pleading for them to make an escape; if he were, Cam might actually consider it. But JD wouldn't ask him to leave unless JD thought he wanted to, so it all balances out. 

"Had an interesting talk with your Uncle Al just now," JD says. "Says the real estate market down in Austin is pretty much a bubble and a half, but there's still a few bargains to be had here and there."

"Yeah," Cam says. "I got a different version of the same song and dance from Ash just now. They're conspiring." 

He expects JD to get his back up over it -- JD's not the type to take manipulation well, even the completely transparent manipulation that's par for the course in clan Mitchell -- but JD's nothing but contemplative. "Never lived in Austin," he says. "I hear it's nice."

"Been down a few times to visit," Cam says, because he's not going to ask what JD's thinking. "You gotta love any town whose motto is 'Keep Austin Weird'." 

"Pretty nice tech market down there," JD says. "Good rehab center in Houston, too. It's what, three hours?" 

Cam sneaks a peek out of the corner of his eye. JD's watching the last bits of sunset, not him. But there's nothing in JD's face but speculation. "You serious about thinking about it?"

"Makes sense," JD says. "I got some firm hints that beating a tactical retreat but giving in a little bit of ground might play well in the press." He shrugs. "I don't care where we settle. Somewhere else might be nice. Fresh start. And I've got enough money set by that we'd be able to turn up a decent down payment. Real estate's a good investment."

"Huh," Cam says. They've never talked about money, nothing beyond the agreement for the proceeds from their business contracts. JD's never hesitated to grab the check at dinner; he keeps coming home with more books, and Cam hasn't paid a single heating, electric, phone, or internet bill since JD moved in. But as far as Cam knew, JD's finances are like his: enough money from the government to make ends meet if you don't mind living hand to mouth for a while, but not enough to live on comfortably for too long without bringing in some extra income.

JD shrugs again. "Always had a hand with money," he says. "You want me to look at your portfolio, I'd be happy to."

Cam's not sure how they got derailed. "Austin," he says.

"Nice little single-story rancher with a big kitchen and an open floor plan," JD says. "Something with wide doors." _In case you do wind up in that wheelchair,_ he means, and Cam's mind shies away from thinking about it. "Something with a big yard and a shed out back for a workshop. I'm thinking three bedrooms so we can each have an office. I don't mind being out in the middle of nowhere if you don't mind being dependent on me to do the errands."

Cam's always intended to buy property someday; he just never got around to it. He's got about thirty grand earmarked for down payment himself, socked away in a conservative-growth mutual fund he can't tap without just enough headache to dissuade him from raiding it for casual use. He's not sure what JD considers a decent down payment, but he's willing to throw his own chips into the pot. If JD is serious.

JD looks serious. "You think it's smart to tie ourselves down with a mortgage when we're trying to get a business off the ground?" Cam asks.

JD smiles. "We won't starve," he says. "I can guarantee that."

Yeah, they're going to have to sit down and have a few conversations: about money, about business plans, about long-term goals. And the fact that Cam can think about long-term and JD in the same mental sentence without panic is telling. He puts his hand on JD's thigh, just to rest it there. 

JD rests his head against Cam's shoulder. Won't be too long he can still do that, Cam thinks; he's been waiting for JD to come into his last bit of growth for a while, and once he does, they'll be of a height, more or less. He doesn't remember ever being in the same room with O'Neill when he wasn't lying down and wasn't hunched over leaning on his cane, but he's pretty sure O'Neill might even have an inch or two on him.

"We'll crunch some numbers when we get home," Cam says. "Maybe take a trip down to Austin and look around."

It's not a yes, but it's not a no, either. It's a big thing, moving in together. Not that they haven't been living with each other since day one, before there even was a _them_ , but that's different; that was JD coming to crash on his couch for a few weeks while they figured out if they could make the partnership work and just never moving back out again. Not the deliberate commitment of looking at property, making compromises in what they both want, signing legal papers that entwine their affairs more than just a simple business deal. 

Cam doesn't have cold feet, not precisely. He'd said to Ash that JD's in it for the long haul, and that statement goes both ways. He's just not sure if he's ready for the reality of it to set in.

"Hey," JD says. Reading Cam's mind as effortlessly as though he had a straight shot in. Cam turns his head, and JD cups his cheek in one hand. Takes a deep breath. "I love you. I'm gonna get better at saying it."

And right there, sitting on the porch swing of the house he grew up in, looking at the man he'd never expected to find and never thought to look for, Cam's heart swells up in his chest until it feels like it's like to bursting. "I love you too," he says. Means it. Because he's had a lot of friends, and he's had a lot of lovers, and he loved some of them -- loves some of them still -- but none of them have ever been the kind he could see still in the picture twenty years down the road. And JD is.

JD smiles. In the glow of the porch light, in the encroaching dusk, it makes his face light up like a spotlight. "Now go and brush your teeth before I kiss you, you ashtray," he says.

It takes Cam a second. Then he's laughing, and Lord, after the week they've had, it feels so fucking good that he lets it go on long and strong. "Come on," he finally says, and gets himself up off the porch swing. "I'm tired. Let's hit the sack."

It's been a long day. But maybe tomorrow will be better, and even if it isn't, well, they kind of have a plan.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Buying a house is one thing; building a home is another. Until the CEO of Farrow-Marshall shows up on CNN one day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Originally [posted](https://synecdochic.dreamwidth.org/146998.html) 2007-08-23.)
> 
> This is about when I stopped pretending that I wasn't writing this. (This is also the point at which I, completely accidentally, lose a year in the chronology; the fic goes from 2006 to 2008. The boys probably dropped it behind the couch while they were moving in.)

## 

six

They close on the house on a rainy day in early March, three days after JD's ID has him turning eighteen. It's easier that way, although they didn't particularly time it. Four beds, two baths, big cul-de-sac lot with big shady trees; it's recent construction, which JD turns up his nose at, but most of Austin is recent construction, and the house is at least fifteen years old, which actually makes it fairly venerable on the housing market they're dealing with.

JD climbs all over the property with a clipboard in one hand and a pencil in the other, marking down things even the home inspector didn't notice. The realtor watches him with wide eyes. JD ignores her; they're only using her because they have to. The place is listed at two hundred and eighty grand; JD gets it down, even in this seller's market, by laying out all the things they'll need to repair and dropping veiled hints about the peeling roof and the ominous gurgle in the water pipes. 

When that only gets the seller down to two-fifty, JD gives his best shark smile and points out that the electric's not up to code either, and that's something that would keep the house off the market for a good long time while it gets fixed. The sellers are a couple moving to San Francisco for the husband's job; they need to turn it over fast. They bought the house at one-twenty three years ago. Cam doesn't begrudge them a profit -- they've put some money into improvements, including the kitchen and the master bath that made both him and JD fall in love with it -- but he's still glad JD's there to drive the bargain. They settle on two-twenty-five, in exchange for a quick closing. Since they're intending to give notice to Mr. and Mrs. Chaisorn as soon as they can -- Cam's on a month-to-month lease -- that suits them just fine; JD confesses after that he'd have settled for two-thirty-five if the sellers hadn't budged further.

Cam puts in his thirty thousand, and Momma and Daddy deed him over his share of what Gran'ma left the family when she followed Grandpa on, which they've been keeping in trust for him; supposed to be a wedding gift, but, well. He's shocked to find that it's a good fifty grand. They don't talk about money in the family, except to make sure that everyone who needs it, has it, and everyone who has it, knows how to be smart with it. He knew it was coming to him, but he didn't know how much it'd be. JD turns out to be sitting on nearly a hundred grand, which was even more of a shock for Cam to discover. They wind up splitting the down payment down the middle, sixty thousand each with the other third left over for repairs, and a down payment of over half the selling price in cash locks them in a hell of a rate; the monthly mortgage payments on a fifteen-year fixed wind up being about sixty percent of what Cam's paying in rent.

("Where'd you --" Cam asks, one night, after the lights are out, and JD settles his hand over Cam's mouth. O'Neill had left him with money, JD explains. To be his college fund -- to make sure he'd be able to make his own way and not be beholden to the Air Force for an education or a living, is what JD suspects, and knowing what he knows -- of both men -- Cam's not sure he's wrong. And Cam asks how O'Neill had it to give, and JD picks Cam's hand up and rests it on the lines of ink circling his right bicep, the section that Cam knows means _father son sorrow remember grief responsibility_ made of interlocking Cs, and repeats, _college fund_. Cam doesn't ask again. Being willing to share doesn't mean you want to, or should have to.)

They schedule the movers for three weeks after closing, and they don't get a lick of code written in those three weeks; base of operations is a rent-by-the-week motel about ten minutes out, because Cam's too creaky to sleep on the floor in sleeping bags. JD turns out to be perfectly capable of doing the electric and plumbing himself -- doesn't surprise Cam by now; he's near come around to the opinion that if it needs fixing, JD can fix it, no matter what it might be -- and Cam can paint most of the walls and trim if he works slow enough and takes frequent breaks to rest and sit. He gets faster once JD comes home from the hardware store with an extended-handle paint roller mixed in with PVC piping and electrical caps, and he can park his ass in the chair and not care about the drips, because they're ripping out all the carpet and replacing it with hardwood anyway.

They bicker about the flooring they're going to use (JD wins; Anderson hickory stained golden, and the first time Cam sees it in the afternoon sunlight, he admits JD's right) and what colors they're going to paint the walls (Cam wins, and when he gets the dusky antique rose and pale moss green up in the living room, JD admits he's right). They bicker about the kitchen (Cam wins on the cabinets; JD wins on the furnishings; Cam wins on the pots-and-pans rack over the center island) and about the bathroom (Cam doesn't actually care about the fittings -- by then the bickering is a point of honor -- but they both agree the hideous wallpaper has to go). They make love in what's going to be their bedroom, nary a bed in sight and nothing but drop-cloths for padding, and Cam's limping for two days afterwards but he can't stop grinning. This place belongs to them, and there's something satisfying in tending it with his own two hands. 

Cam's in charge of charming the neighbors. Left side's a pair of little old ladies, Miss Ella and Miss Noreen, who combined households when they'd both been left widowed early. Right side's the Parkinsons, a family of four, another on the way; he's a geologist and she's a lawyer and the kids (nine and six, both girls) look to be developing a crush on JD to beat the band. Miss Ella and Miss Noreen know damn well what he and JD are to each other; Steve Parkinson seems clueless, but Nancy's smile is pretty knowing. 

Doesn't look like they'll be finished in time for the movers to arrive, until all of a sudden they are. Then it's time for another round of bickering, this time about the furniture -- they threw out half of what Cam had in storage, since it wasn't fit to be seen -- and Cam wins that one resoundingly. The one piece JD didn't argue about was the bed. King-sized, to replace Cam's double that they've been cramming themselves into for the past nine months. Their first night in it, with JD all acres of skin and bone spread golden beneath him and begging, Cam thinks it's a little slice of heaven brought down to earth.

Uncle Al, when he drops by after the decorous week-and-a-half to allow them time to get settled in, pronounces himself impressed. They feed him -- Cam's over the moon about having an _actual kitchen_ to work in, instead of his apartment's postage stamp -- and give him the grand tour. He nods a few times and then allows how it's a busy semester for him and he won't be able to get out here as often as he'd like. Cam knows it for what it is: approval, and a tacit promise that he'll stay out of their business. Another ally, then. 

Momma and Daddy haven't said anything direct to disapprove of him and JD mingling finances like this, but there's still that hint of worry. Cam can't tell if it's worry that JD is taking advantage of him or worry that JD's going to want to move on and have Cam buy back his half. He doesn't say a word when Nolo's _Legal Guide for Gay and Lesbian Couples_ appears on his doorstop from Amazon.com with a little note from Momma about how she hopes it'll help, but he rolls his eyes a little. He and JD have already paid a lawyer a hell of a lot of money to make it all nice and tidy for them; neither one of them is stupid. But Momma and Daddy are trying, and he's not going to say a word to discourage them.

The housewarming gifts from the family start rolling in -- towels and sheets, curtains and cookware. The odd piece of furniture, though it'll take years before they can replace all the store-bought with hand-made. Uncle Bayliss sends a bookcase that's so nicely sized to the bizarre half-corner of Cam's office, where the roof cuts down and leaves a useless little nook, that Cam suspects him and JD, or perhaps him and Uncle Al, of conspiring. Susie Mae and Maria send a beautiful hand-glazed bowl -- it's Maria's hobby -- that gets settled on the kitchen table to be filled with apples or oranges or whatever's in season. They also send a condom sampler from Condomania and a grab-bag of flavored lube; those go into the nightstand before company can drop by and see them.

And by then it's April. They're settling back into their routine -- the Navy's done with field testing, and they've got some changes they want made before final signoff and final payment -- when Momma drops the bombshell, on Cam's weekly call home, that Cindy Lou's expecting again. An accident, Cam knows; she and Ash had decided to hold steady at three, at least until they were sure Ash would be back in the States for a good long while. But there's no such thing as an unwanted Mitchell, only an unplanned one, and so Cam pulls out his knitting needles and his lace charts and starts work on the christening shawl early. 

Two days later, he picks up the phone again, and it's Spence on the other end of the line. "Deep space radar telemetry?" he asks, sounding offended.

It takes Cam a second before he cracks up. Spence and Skipper must have gotten hit by the first round of recruiters. His own had promised "experimental aircraft development and test piloting." "Give it another couple weeks," Cam says. "You call me back after you get the full briefing and tell me I'm still crazy."

Spence gets awfully quiet, though. "I need to know before I tell them yes or no, Uncle Cam," he says. "We're doing important things where we are. I can't tell you how important, but it's big. Whatever this is, is it going to match it?"

"Spence," Cam says. "You can trust me when I say that this is probably the most important command in the entire damn service, and if they want you, it's an honor and a privilege." He pauses. Honesty makes him add, "And a damn good way of getting yourself killed, if you're not ready for it. Be ready for it. And don't be stupid about it."

"I saw what happened to you," Spence says, quiet and calm. "And I'm not worried about getting hurt or killed. I'm worried about it being for the wrong reasons. What we're doing right now, it's for the right reasons, but not everything is. I'm sorry, Uncle Cam. I need to know why you walked away from it."

Walked away is maybe the wrong wording, and Cam can hear Spence wincing as soon as the words leave his mouth. "Because I couldn't carry the weight anymore," Cam says, before Spence can fall over himself apologizing. "Because it's a damn heavy one, and I wasn't strong enough. Because I watched my boys and girls dying to buy a handful of people one scrap of a chance, and it worked when it shouldn't have, and luck like that doesn't strike twice and I didn't think I could stand to watch it again. It's not easy. But it's important."

There's a pause, and then Spence sighs; Cam can hear it clear as bells over the phone line. "Important things usually aren't," Spence says. "Easy, I mean. Tell JD I want his story once we've signed the papers. And tell him I said thank you for the compliment, while you're at it."

"If they're smart," JD says, when Cam passes on the contents of the call, "they'll keep Spence in the mountain, assisting whoever Hank's got as XO, and train the kid up right to deal with all the politics. I'd send Skipper out as junior military on one of the Gate teams. SG-9 always needs people who are quick on their feet. Or maybe Atlantis, now they're back in touch. They're desperate."

Atlantis, Cam thinks: Atlantis, where Daniel Jackson retreated, where they're fighting their own war. He wonders if JD would have Skipper carry a message. He's not entirely sure, but he doesn't think he'd mind. Not now. JD's _his_ ; Cam knows, by now, what strength the concept of _home_ carries for him, and how much it means that JD chose to make that home be here.

April turns to May. The laundry room is the last on the list of rooms to have sex in; Cam bends JD over the dryer while it's on spin cycle and fucks him long and slow and steady. Afterwards they fold the towels and pull on sweats fresh from the dryer. Cam rests his hand on JD's chest and draws him in for a long slow kiss. JD kisses like every kiss is the end of the world; Cam thinks he'll never get tired of it, not if they live a million years and love each other all the way.

Later, they're in the kitchen -- their kitchen serves the purpose that the living room does for other people; they shopped around for a right proper kitchen table and couldn't find one, so for three weeks it was meals on a folding card table while JD fussed around in the backyard and they prayed for no rain. The resulting table is gorgeous hand-planed oak, big enough to seat four and built straight into the breakfast nook, and instead of chairs, it's got padded booth benches that a body just wants to sink into. 

They're both ignoring it for now, though. Cam's thumping around putting together a meal: penne with homemade pesto sauce, sauteed up with some grilled chicken and zucchini and squash he picked up from Central Market yesterday afternoon, and he'll serve it with slices of toasted bread from the weekend's baking. JD is sitting cross-legged on the counter, in what Cam thinks of as "his spot", next to the refrigerator and well out of the way of Cam's cooking trajectory. He's got a book in one hand (the books have multiplied and multiplied again; this one's a history of Roman engineering, and Cam's going to steal it when JD's done) and a glass of red wine in the other. The TV in the living room, tuned to CNN, is nothing but comforting background noise.

Until JD's wineglass hits the floor, and the crack of it shattering and splashing everywhere is almost like a gunshot. "Turn it up," he says, death in his voice.

It takes Cam a second to realize what he's talking about, but JD's eyes are fixed through the open pass-through on the TV. The remote's closer to Cam. He dials it up, because JD looks like he couldn't slide off the counter and move to do it himself if he was ordered to at gunpoint. 

It's a press conference. The scrollbar underneath identifies the man who's talking, flashbulbs popping everywhere, as one Kevin Balim, CEO of Farrow-Marshall Industries. Cam doesn't recognize the name. Guy looks to be in his mid-forties: sharp face, dark eyes, dark hair going grey at the edges. Neatly trimmed goatee. He's dressed fit to beat the band, and he's talking about government harassment of private-sector industries.

Cam can't see any hint of what's bothering JD, but when Balim brings up Colson Aviation and starts demanding results of the investigation into Alec Colson's disappearance, JD starts swearing and doesn't stop until the camera cuts back to the anchor.

There's a story here. But JD's barefoot and there's broken glass on the floor, so Cam props his cane against the island and stoops down with a dishrag to mop up the worst of the glass fragments and the wine-spill before he grabs the dustpan. He doesn't ask. JD will tell him as soon as he's ready.

When he's done with the cleanup, he looks up to check on JD's progress. JD's got his eyes squeezed shut, and his lips are moving, but he's not making any sound. As Cam watches, he draws himself up to sit straight-spined, arranges his hands on top of each other in his lap. Takes a few deep breaths. Cam knows it for JD's calming routine; JD's told him about those months in the Soto Zen Buddhist monastery in Oregon, about all the lessons he learned there. 

Takes a while this time. Cam pulls the penne off the heat, dishes it up into two bowls, puts them on the table. JD's still sitting. Working through something now, though, Cam can tell. He's found his calm; his face says that now he's rooting through his brain, finding and tagging all the pieces of information he needs to formulate a plan of attack for whatever problem he's just identified. 

Cam fetches down a pair of white wine glasses from the cabinet, opens a bottle of Riesling and pours with a generous hand. JD prefers reds, but pasta gets a white. He passes by JD when he puts the bottle back in the refrigerator, but he doesn't touch, no matter how much his palms itch to. JD's busy, and he doesn't need the distraction.

When JD finally opens his eyes, Cam's settled himself down at the kitchen table and started eating; no point in letting good food go cold while he waits. JD plants a hand on the counter and leaps down with one fluid motion. His face is serious as he sits down across from Cam. "We have a problem."

"Figured," Cam says. "You tell me what we need to do, and we'll make it good."

Something moves in JD's face. It takes a second for Cam to identify it as relief. "Balim," JD says. "Ba'al."

Cam chokes on his wine. It burns as it goes down. "Fuck," he says. 

"Yeah," JD says. And then he tells Cam about the Trust.

The bowls are empty and the bread's long gone when JD's done, but Cam doesn't remember another bite, and he's pretty sure JD didn't notice any of it. There's white chocolate amaretto ice cream from Amy's in the freezer for dessert, but it'll keep. "Any idea what Balim's game is?" Cam finally asks.

"None," JD says. "I'll call around. Tug on the strings I've still got. Someone has to have seen that press conference, and I'm pretty sure O'Neill will have put someone on the problem already. But I don't know how ... objective he can be about it."

More story there, but now's not the time. "Anything we can do?" Cam asks. "Or leave it to the people who are still in the game?"

"I don't _know_." JD scrubs his hands over his face. "I can't say. I'm out of the loop. By choice, but still. I'll call Carter. Hammond. We've known for a while that there are Goa'uld on Earth, but last intel I had, we had them mostly taken care of. Pinned in. But --" He breaks off. Drops his head into his hands, pulls at his hair. "Fucking _hell_ ," he says. "Five years. If this goddamn body looked just _five years_ older --"

"Hey," Cam says. He gets himself up off the bench, slides behind JD to dig his thumbs into the knotted muscles of JD's shoulders. "Let it go," he says, as gentle as he can. He knows JD can't, but he has to say it. "You've gotta trust them to deal with it."

The lines of JD's body are savage as he pulls away and stands. "If I could trust Hank to deal with it, I wouldn't be this upset," he snaps, and then closes his eyes and takes another deep breath. "Sorry. Issues. Big ones. I need to --"

"Go," Cam says, as gently as he can, because he knows that what JD needs right now is to go out running: work his body to exhaustion, wear off some of the nervous explosion of energy, give his mind time to turn over the problem some more. He also knows that JD knows how much Cam envies him that ability. 

JD's face twists, a short sharp shock of misery. "Yeah," he says. "Okay." He turns, headed for the bedroom, to pull on a tank top and sneakers no doubt. Then turns back. "I love you." 

"Love you too," Cam says, quiet and calm and strong, and picks up the dishes to put them in the sink.

JD's calmer when he comes back. More settled with himself, or at least more exhausted, which does a good impression. Nothing they can do, JD's decided, but wait and see how things play out, wait and see what intel JD can scrounge. The fact eats at him, Cam can tell. Frustrates and annoys and upsets him. There isn't much Cam can do about that, but he can take JD to bed and hold him tight, tell him wordlessly that it'll be all right, it'll be okay, no matter what they have to do. That no matter what they have to do, they'll be doing it together.

Two weeks later, the phone rings in the middle of the night. Babies and deaths are the only things that come calling at three in the morning, and nobody's due to be born for another few months. JD beats Cam to the bedside phone; Cam sits up straight and tries to calm his heart, tries searching JD's face for some sign. "Yeah," JD says, and then, "Oh God, I'm sorry. Hang on." 

And JD knows it's better to tell it straight, so as he hands the phone over, he says, "Cindy's father. Heart attack."

"Oh, hell," Cam says, and takes the phone. It's Momma, and she's got her brisk-and-business voice on to hide the tears. Cindy's momma died five years back in a car accident; the Mitchells had closed around James and held him up, and he had already been near-kin even before. Funeral's in four days. Cindy Lou's already having a troubled pregnancy, four months along and she can't keep a single thing down long enough for it to do her any good; she's been in the hospital overnight for treatment twice already. This is gonna make it worse.

Cam hangs up the phone and takes a minute to just ask God for a little bit of grace. Then he gets out of bed and goes to book plane fare. JD's hand settles on his shoulder a minute later; it's warm comfort. "For two," he says.

Cam closes his eyes against the relief. "You don't have to come," he says.

"Don't be an idiot," JD says. "Yes, I do."

They bury Cindy Lou's daddy on a grey Thursday morning, and Cam's there at Cindy Lou's side where Ash can't be. James served in Vietnam, so he's earned the honors. Half the family and more is in uniform, from Sarah in her brand-new ensign's dress whites to Great-Uncle George with his World War Two ribbons on the cut and style of uniform that nobody's worn in years. Cam thinks, as JD re-pins the silver leaf on his shoulders for him before they go, that he's never going to wear this uniform again except when they're burying family. It cuts him deep, until he sees the look in JD's eyes. JD's not going to wear it again ever, isn't entitled to the silver birds he held in his own right or the stars O'Neill sports now. 

He catches JD's hand as they walk out to join the family massing in the driveway, bound for the funeral home. It throws his balance off, but he just has to hold harder. JD hesitates for a minute (and Cam can tell why, Cam _knows_ why; he's wearing his blues, and love never shames honor, but it's a hard thing to overcome the conditioning of years) and then lets Cam hold on.

Cindy Lou bears up, until the bugle sings out _day is done, gone the sun_ and she breaks down. Cam's at full salute. He's about to break it, about to hold her close, until JD lets his hand drop from over his heart and pulls her in to comfort. The flag's folded; the captain of the honor guard presents it to her. And then the casket's lowered into the ground and the minister says the last words, and they take Cindy Lou and the kids home and try to get some food in them.

Cam's up past everyone's bedtime -- exhausting day, exhausting _week_ \-- thanks to timezones; JD's asleep already, ran himself ragged fetching and carrying and listening and saying soothing words to anyone who needed them, but Cam's not quite ready to settle yet. He leaves JD sleeping in their bed and tries to be quiet as he makes his way into the kitchen. Cup of hot chocolate and a slice of the sweet potato pie the neighbors brought, and maybe he'll be sleepy by then.

He's about to flip the lights on when a voice comes out of the dark. "Leave it off."

It's Momma. Cam's hand stills on the light-switch, and he makes his way over to the table to sit down with her, the hot chocolate forgotten. "You all right?" he asks as he settles himself in.

His eyes are adjusting; he can see she's holding a cup of tea in her hands, but the way she's holding it says that it's been there a long time and is probably cold as winter by now. "Just tired," she says. "That poor child."

"She's got family," Cam says. Lots of stuff you can bear, when you've got family standing with you.

"I know," Momma says. She reaches across the table, takes Cam's hand in her own. Cam's always surprised by how thin her bones are; those hands could move mountains. "Bad time for it, though. Bad timing all around."

Cam covers their joined hands with his other. "No good time for a funeral," he says. "You need any help with Cindy Lou or the kids, you call us. We can work anywhere."

He doesn't realize until he's already said it that he made the offer in the plural, but Momma doesn't seem to notice. "You've got your home to tend," she says. 

"Doesn't matter," Cam says. It doesn't. Everyone comes home to Momma sooner or later; Cindy Lou and the kids are living here while Ash is overseas, and she's not the only one. Momma's got Elizabeth's two-year-old and Miranda and her boys and Carter and his baby girl all in residence. Easier to be a military spouse when there are others to take up the burden, and Momma's shoulders are strong. Still doesn't mean she can't always use another pair of hands.

Momma squeezes his hand. "I know," she says again, and then draws in a breath and lets it out on a big sigh. "We'll be all right. She'll grieve a while, and then she'll go on."

"Summer's coming up," Cam says. "We've got a spare room."

What he's saying, and he shouldn't be saying it without talking to JD first but he doesn't think JD would say no, is that Chandler and Stewart usually spend (spent) the summers with their granddaddy. Family swaps kids around for the summers, once school's out; the running joke is that everyone's looking for a set they like better than the one they have, while the reality is that everybody in the family knows that it's better if children have ties spread wide, in case anything (God forbid) should happen. 

He can see Momma smiling a little. "I know you do," she says. "Could be it'll be full this year. But you need some time to your own."

It's not a no, and that eases Cam's mind a little. There'd been a part of him worried that Momma would think they weren't suited to host. "Don't think we'd mind," he says. "JD's good with kids." 

He realizes after he says it that he probably shouldn't have; their story for the family doesn't include a good reason for why. But Momma just nods. "That he is," she says. "That boy's had to grow up faster than anyone should have a reason to."

Cam makes some noncommittal noise. Momma sighs again, soft and shifting. "Don't you give me that noise, Cameron," she says, and sets her tea mug aside. "I'm still your momma."

"Yes, ma'am," he says, automatically. Debates saying more, but no; not the time for it. 

"You get yourself back to bed, now," she says. "It's late, and your flight's early tomorrow."

Cam nods. He gets himself up out of the chair, comes over to hug her before he goes. She rests her head against his chest for a minute, then slides back her chair and gets up to rinse out her mug in the sink. "I love you, Momma," Cam says, watching her back.

"I love you too," she says, and they both go off to their beds.

The Navy finally pronounces themselves satisfied; the final payment goes into their operating fund, minus the cost of a new laptop for Cam, since his is starting to get a little creaky around the edges. They're invited to bid on another contract, a much bigger one: one Cam actually isn't sure they have the skills necessary to handle. But JD spends two days on the phone with various people Cam doesn't know, and at the end of it, they've got a bid and a proposal JD says will lowball everyone else by a good hundred grand.

"You're not afraid to use your powers for evil," Cam says. "I like that in a guy."

JD laughs. "We'll subcontract the manufacturing part of it," he says. "I don't think the metallurgy lab would fit in the shed."

They don't have plans for Memorial Day; the family holds court all weekend, but it's not a command performance, and they've decided they can't afford airfare again so soon. They don't have that contract in the bag yet; they won't hear for a few months, if not more. JD's noodling around with the software that runs their home security setup, tweaking a little bit of this and a little bit of that, and he's buried deep in the Bluetooth specs when the doorbell rings on Saturday afternoon.

Cam's just about to start kneading the bread dough, but he doesn't have flour all over him yet, so he dries off his hands on the kitchen towel tucked into his jeans and heads on over to see who it is. When he opens the door, it's Spencer and Skipper, both of them in civvies; there's a rental car parked in the driveway. 

"Sorry we didn't call first," Skipper says. 

Cam's more than a little surprised to see them; they're supposed to be in Germany right now. "Never need to call family," he says, automatically, and holds the door open. "C'mon in. What's the trouble, and how long are you staying?"

"Only until Monday," Skipper says. "We could get a hotel room --"

Had to make the offer, and Cam's gotta turn it down. "Bite your tongue," he says, easily. "Kitchen's through here. You eaten anything yet?"

Cam parks them both at the kitchen table, leaves them with glasses of sweet tea and a plate of cookies fresh from the oven -- Saturday is baking day -- and goes to kiss the back of JD's neck until JD stops swearing at the laptop and recognizes he's being hailed. "We've got company," he says. "Spence and Skipper. Staying until Monday. Should I kill them and hide the bodies so they don't disturb you?"

But JD stands and stretches, and his smile is impish. "Was waiting for that," he says. "Although I figured they'd call first."

When Cam and JD get back into the kitchen, Spence is working his way through the cookies -- he's no dummy -- and Skipper's pacing back and forth. He turns when the two of them enter. "Deep space radar telemetry _my fucking ass_ ," he says. "That's --"

JD holds up a hand. "Easy there, Captain," he says, and Skipper shuts up; has to, with that tone in JD's voice. "Hold that thought for five minutes."

Skipper looks at Cam, but Cam just shrugs. He's long since given up on understanding half of what JD does. JD turns around and disappears back down the hallway; from the sound of it, Cam thinks he's in the bedroom he uses as an office. There's a lockbox in there that Cam's never seen him open, never asked about. 

"Uncle Cam," Skipper says, in an undertone, while JD's gone. Cam shakes his head.

"It's all right," Cam says. "Give it a minute."

JD comes back in three of the promised five minutes, holding a nondescript grey-metal sphere that fits neatly in his palm. He's pushing a couple of touchpad buttons as he goes, and it's rippling pretty pink lights. Cam frowns at it as JD places it down on the island counter and wedges it between Maria's bowl and the napkin-holder to keep it from rolling away, and then he remembers where he's seen something like before; it looks like one of the pieces of high-tech art Sam had scattered around her house the last time he went to visit her in Colorado Springs, right before his accident.

He raises an eyebrow at JD. Spence is doing the same; Skipper's more blunt about it. "What the heck is that thing?"

"Lesson one," JD says, mildly. "You never know who might be listening. At any point, at any time. You don't talk about the program outside the Mountain. Ever. I take it you got your new assignment."

"Briefed already, report Tuesday," Spence says, helpfully, and reaches for another cookie. Skipper just gawks.

The gizmo turns out to be a jammer ("Asgard," JD says, "as interpreted by Carter, as interpreted by me"), Spence and Skipper turn out to be on their way to Cheyenne Mountain after having gotten their full briefing ("which leaves you with a hell of a lot more questions than it answered," JD says, and mutters something about how quality of recruiters has gone down), and Spence turns out to have put nearly all of it together, although he thinks JD is some sort of military experiment in anti-aging technology. Cam queries JD with his eyes; he'll let JD decide how much to say.

JD decides to say the part about the Asgard ("no, really, the little green men are grey instead, and don't ever ask why they don't wear clothes") and the part about the cloning, but he leaves out the details about just whose DNA Loki was messing around with. "Holy shit," Spence says, when JD is done. "That --"

"--must suck a whole lot," Skipper finishes. And if they're doing the twin finishing-each-other's-sentences thing, it means that they're really riled up; they learned to stop that a long time back, for the ease of listeners. 

JD just smiles, thin-lipped. "You could say," he says. He's sitting on his spot of the counter again; Cam will never be able to watch him pull his legs up into full-lotus without wincing and envying all at once. 

"So you were part of the SGC too, Uncle Cam?" Skipper asks, and all of a sudden -- without any warning, without any sign -- Cam's back in the cockpit of an F-302 watching wreckage trail down around him.

He doesn't get the flashbacks often (praise God and Jesus and everyone on down), but when he gets them, they're full-on immersive. He closes his hands around the edge of the table and tries to breathe through it, tries to tell himself he's _here_ \-- in their own kitchen, in their own home, thousands of miles away from a snowbank in Antarctica where he was slowly dying for hour upon hour before they came to salvage the plane and what they thought would be his body.

The hand on his neck is what finally snaps him out of it; JD's standing beside him and has him by the scruff like a kitten, pulling just hard enough for Cam to have something to focus on. "Back now, Mitchell," he's saying, his eyes intent on Cam's face. "C'mon back to me."

Cam breathes out, shallow and shaky. "Yeah," he says, nothing more, and JD lets him go, but leaves his hand on the nape of Cam's neck. Cam turns his face and rests it against JD's hip. Breathes in, deeper this time, and tries to slow the beating of his heart. "Bad one. Sorry."

JD doesn't shake off the apology, just nods. "Legs okay?"

"Yeah," Cam says. They're not, but he knows the pain's psychosomatic. He can tell the difference by now.

JD doesn't contradict him, but he knows JD knows he's lying. JD slides in next to him in the booth and puts his hands on Cam's right thigh, the one with the most muscle damage and the one that always hurts worst. His hands are warm, even through Cam's jeans, and he works the tense spots carefully. Spence and Skipper have both frozen, staring. Cam makes himself smile. "Sorry," he says again, to the twins this time. 

"What the hell did they do to you?" Skipper blurts. Spence is too busy watching the two of them and thinking.

Cam sighs. "It really was an airplane crash," he says. "Just not a test flight."

They talk through dinner and well into the night, and Cam knows they're (both) saying more than they should, but it's too much of a relief to finally be able to say it to someone. He hadn't realized how isolated he felt, even with JD there, until he could actually say something. To _somebody_ in the family, even if it's not Momma and Daddy. 

Spence is bound for SG-9, while Skipper's bound for SG-13. JD winces at the mention of SG-13, and his hands still for a minute, but he hides it quickly. "Benton," nodding at Spence, "and Dixon," nodding at Skipper. "Good men."

Cam's trying to remember what he ever knew of the Gate teams. "Diplomatic and -- exploration?" he hazards. 

Skipper nods. "That's what they told us."

"I've got a message for you to carry," JD says. Cam looks over at him, but his face is nothing more than contemplative. "Colonel Reynolds. SG-3. Tell him he needs to remember coming home from P3X-811. When he asks you who told you to carry the message, tell him it was the same person who taught him Alekhine's Defense, but no matter what he says, don't mention me. Reynolds won't push, and he won't turn you in for it. You need me to repeat that?"

"No sir," Spence says; he's got a head for numbers. Spence has been calling JD 'sir' all conversation. Spence is no idiot, even if he looks a little wild around the eyes every time he says it. 

Later on, when they've got Spence and Skipper settled in the guest room and they're undressing for bed, Cam says, "P3X-811?" He's got a head for numbers, too.

JD sits down on the edge of the bed. "Fourth year," he says. Then frowns and corrects himself. "Fifth year. They all blur together after a while. Reynolds and his men got dosed with some hallucinogenic crap that Fraiser didn't catch. They were halfway on their way out the Mountain when it finally kicked in, and they spent the next two days in isolation screaming that everyone from Hammond on down was in the employ of the Goa'uld and out to get them."

Cam frowns. It takes him a minute to work out the implications of why JD wants Spence and Skipper to carry the reminder, why JD's willing to risk their reputations at a command they haven't even started yet just to carry a cryptic message. He's ashamed to admit that it takes him that long. He's out of practice, and JD's mind turns in sneaky ways. "You think the SGC might be infiltrated."

"Hope to hell I'm wrong," JD says. "And I don't think it too seriously. But from what I can find, Landry's not pushing back against the NID the way he should be, and that's always been the SGC's responsibility even if it's not the SGC's mandate. If O'Neill didn't explain that to him before handing over the keys, I'll eat my hat. Which leaves either incompetence or deliberate mis-handling."

Cam sighs. "You should go," he says. Breaks his heart to say it, but it needs to be said. "Look into things. I know you want to."

JD turns and catches Cam's hand in his. "No," he says, quick and firm. "No. I don't. I don't want to leave you, and I don't want to get involved again." But then he sighs, and rubs his other hand over his face. "But you're right. It's driving me batshit. Would you mind if I took a weekend and went out to hassle Carter in person? Things you can't say on an insecure line."

Cam only has to think for a second; his brain's warming up. "I'll call her up and invite her here," he says. "She and I have been friends for years. If anyone's watching her, it's less suspicious, and you can just keep being my twink boyfriend."

Something very much like approval hits JD's face. "Good thought," he says. 

But he's shivering a little when he curls up behind Cam and rests his forehead on the nape of Cam's neck, and Cam thinks it has nothing to do with the temperature of the room and everything to do with the thought of stepping back into a part of O'Neill's life, however briefly. With feeling like he _has_ to step back into a part of O'Neill's life, even just long enough to satisfy himself. 

Cam doesn't have any answers, and he doesn't have any solutions. He knows JD well enough to know that JD considers himself still bound by his oath ( _enemies foreign and domestic_ , and the Goa'uld are about as foreign as they come) just as much as Cam does. Some promises are for life. But neither of them are what they used to be, and just because you've made a promise doesn't mean you sometimes don't want to walk away from it. Doesn't mean that sometimes you do walk away from it.

But neither of them would be who they are if they could walk away forever, either.

There's no good answer. There's not even any good question; JD might be jumping at shadows, a possibility he fully acknowledges. Hopes for, even. But it's the not knowing that'll kill them both.

"I'll call in the morning," Cam says, into the darkness, and JD's arm tightens over his side. And Cam's not sure what JD is thinking, but what Cam's thinking, as he stares out into the darkness of their bedroom, is: _please let it be nothing_.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,_   
>  _Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,_   
>  _Silence the pianos and with muffled drum_   
>  _Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Originally [posted](https://synecdochic.dreamwidth.org/147321.html) 2007-08-24.)

## 

seven

Getting Sam to take time from her job out at Area 51 takes some careful negotiation; Cam can't say why he (they) really want her to come visit, so he's limited to making noises about how she really must come out to see the house. It's not the best enticement in the world. He's pretty sure that the last thing she wants to subject herself to is coming to stay with the old friend she still thinks she crippled (Sam Carter has elevated guilt to an art form) and the teeny-something clone of her former CO and (if Cam's not mistaken, and on things like this, Cam's rarely mistaken) current-and-eternal love fixation that said old friend is shacking up with. 

JD is patient for two weeks. In the middle of week three, he grabs the phone from Cam as he's about to launch into same-song-fifteenth-verse and snaps, "Just get your ass _out here_ , Carter," before hanging up on her. 

"That's one way," Cam allows, as the phone rings back. "Not the way I woulda done it." JD bares his teeth and snarls before stalking off. He's not taking waiting well; Cam can't entirely blame him, but Cam is willing to be a little more subtle about things. 

For a second Cam debates following him, but no; it's a leave-me-alone temper, not a coax-me-out-of-it temper. He picks up the phone on the fourth ring, just as it's about to ring through to voice mail. When he does, before he can even say hello, Sam says, her voice resigned, "Is Houston okay? I'd have to fly civilian, and I can't get to Austin without another four hours of delay."

There is careful negotiation after Cam hangs up the phone. He's still not sure if JD -- if the part of JD that was once O'Neill -- knows about Sam's feelings. If he doesn't, Cam's not going to be the one to enlighten him. But he drops hints about how it might be easier if Sam's first moment facing JD doesn't happen in a crowded airport, and JD drops rocks (not subtle enough to be hints) about how driving is one of the things that fall into the category of "things that will hurt and therefore I will do for you", and Cam can tell that they're both dialing tempers back a few notches lest somebody wind up sleeping on the couch. 

But Cam wins, and that's how he winds up driving three hours to Houston on a Friday night; Intercontinental, even, straight in the middle of Houston traffic hell. And JD was right; it does hurt like blazes to be sitting in one position for three hours, even if he doesn't have to keep his foot down on the gas or on the brake, but it's pride, dammit, and he's not giving in. He parks the car, takes a minute to carefully and lovingly key the Beemer that's parked next to him in the handicapped spaces with no plates or hang-tag in sight. Then he heads on in and checks the arrivals board so he's sure to be standing in the right spot.

When her flight deplanes, it takes him a second to recognize her in the crowd. She looks older than the last time he saw her -- a little thinner, a little more drawn -- but she smiles when she sees him. The smile's a little rough around the edges as her eyes drop down to where he's leaning on his cane, but she recovers fast enough, and he decides that he'll try his damndest to avoid taking offense. She's wearing a pretty summer dress; it contrasts sharply with the beat-up khaki canvas backpack she's got slung over one shoulder.

"Baby," Cam says, and holds out one arm. She steps up into the hug straight off. "Missed you. Sorry I've been a jackass."

"Missed you too," she says. "Sorry I've been a self-centered bitch." 

He disengages them carefully, mindful of the people moving around them. It's funny how fast he got used to JD being there to create a bulwark against the ebb and flow of crowds. "You haven't," he says.

Her smile's a little more genuine this time. "Well, you haven't either. How's --" She stops, corrects herself. "What's the emergency?"

"He said to tell you Rule Twelve," Cam says. 

He doesn't know what it means -- JD hadn't been willing to explain, and Cam's on his most careful behavior around JD this week, so he hadn't asked -- but it obviously means something to Sam. Her eyebrows go straight up. "He did, did he," she says. "Interesting."

Cam's expecting some other reaction -- or at least an explanation -- but none's forthcoming; she hikes up the strap of her backpack instead. "C'mon," he says, rather than waiting for her to say anything else. "Let's get your luggage, and then I'll buy you a Whataburger for dinner."

Sam's eyes go dreamy for one split second; Cam _knows_ he's one of maybe five people in the world who knows about how much she loves local-chain fast food. "Ah, the benefits of Texas," she says. "I didn't check anything. After you."

He grits his teeth a little -- can't let her see it, but he's pretty sure she'd understand the laws of inertia; getting moving is the worst part -- and gets himself going. She does what would have been falling into step behind him a long damn time ago. Turns out she kind of sucks at pacing a cripple; she's got long legs and there's a trick to walking next to him now, a deliberate shortening of the stride that JD's got down until it looks natural and Sam can't put together to save her life. She keeps hitching ahead, turning her head and realizing he's not at her side, and looking guilty and stopping until he catches up.

Takes a good fifteen minutes for them to get out to the parking garage, where it would have taken three or four before, and she's in one of the hitch-ahead phases when she walks straight past where his car's parked, craning her head around her.

"Baby," he says, just one soft word, and she jerks (guilt, _guilt_ , it's eating her alive) and turns around. He knocks the trunk of the car. 

It takes a second for her to process. She'd helped him put in some work on the Mustang, fixed up the carburetor while he'd done the brake lines and banged out the dings in the quarter-panel. Cam's driving a Crown Vic now, one of the 1999 first-year Police Interceptor models; he'd gotten out of the hospital to discover that Carter (the cousin, not Sam; Carter's got ten years on the job back home, different kind of service, is all) had called through the cop grapevine to find a surplused one for him. Carter had put in the hand controls, too. Cam wouldn't have done it himself, but he's grateful that Carter did.

But Sam looks miserable. "The Mustang --" she says.

Cam sighs. Better to have this out straight off. "Too low to the ground, hard to get in and out of, couldn't take the hand controls, not enough room to stow a chair if I need one. Deeded her over to Bobby Lee for a dollar and a promise that he'd treat her like he treats his girlfriend. Not the end of the world. Betty here's a bit of a whale, but she does me just fine." 

He holds out a hand for her backpack. She slides it off her shoulder, and then looks uncertain as to whether or not she should hand it over. He sighs. Reaches out and takes it. He won't put up with being thought less abled than he is. He tosses her backpack in the backseat with a little more force than he ought, and when he shuts the door, the echo rings loud in the garage.

"I'm so sorry, Cam," Sam says, quietly.

And that tears it. "Samantha Eileen Carter, I don't want to hear another word out of you," he says, and she's so startled by hearing him channeling Momma that she shuts straight up. "You didn't have a thing to do with this. Last time I checked, you weren't flying the -- plane -- that shot me down, and you damn hell weren't the idiot that left me out on that ice for seven hours. And this didn't happen because I was protecting you. This happened because I was defending my -- country, and I was following orders, and if God himself rewound time and put me back there, I'd do the same damn thing over again." 

He's starting to shout -- he can hear it -- and so he stops himself, reins it back in. "And when you go around giving me that look in your eyes," he says, more quietly this time, "you're saying that you don't think the lives of every man, woman, and child we pass by are worth a little suffering for. And I know you don't think that. So you zip it and get over yourself, baby, 'cause I'm not taking it from you." 

Her eyes are swimming, and she looks like he's slapped her. But she draws herself up straight and squares her shoulders. "Yeah," she says. "Yeah. Okay." She closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. "Yeah," she repeats. "I'm sorry." 

It's not pity this time, so he'll take it. He nods. "Accepted," he says. "Now c'mon. I'm hungry."

It's a little awkward for a bit, especially when she sees him driving with his hands and not his feet, but he turns up the CCR (he won this round of the iPod war, since he was going to be driving solo) so they don't have to talk. Discretion is the better part of valor. He sings along, and she unbends enough to tap out the beat against the door-handle. 

The car smells of grease and french fries for a good hour, even though they have to park to eat. They go through the drive-through, but eating while he's driving is one of those things he'll never do again. She watches out the window as the world goes by. Cam likes the road from Houston to Austin; he's done it a few times already, and once you get on 10 it's a straight line out to 71 and from there to home. He puts up with the quiet (hard to have quiet when CCR's turned to the Beastie Boys, but he doesn't mean that kind of quiet) for a while, and then sighs and dials down the music. 

"Tell me about what you're up to these days," he says. "Car's not bugged. We check."

They check now, he means. JD had taken the credit card and gone, in quick succession, through Radio Shack, Fry's, and a few dusty hobbyist-speciality stores Cam hadn't even known existed. The car's a Faraday cage now: no signal in, no signal out, except for the hack JD put together for the iPod retransmitter. Cam doesn't know what steps JD's taken for the house; he just trusts that whatever they are, they're the best possible.

So she tells him what she's doing -- it's R&D on paper, but it's turned into politics of the highest (and smelliest) order, she says, defending the technology brought back from the program against all comers -- and he tells her what he's doing (she makes impressed noises; he doesn't think she expected this to work). Then it's on to family news and gossip, though he's pretty sure she talks to Momma more often than either one of them lets on. Momma adopted Sam like a long-lost daughter about five minutes after they met. That gets them to nearly half an hour out from home, and he's starting to relax when she stirs and says, "Is he -- doing okay?"

No question about what she means. "Yeah," Cam says. He doesn't like carrying tales, but better if she's prepared. "He's happy. We're happy. And -- it's better if you think of him as someone separate. He's his own person. He's not a teenager, and he's not an idiot. But he's not O'Neill, either."

There's more to it than that, but that's about all of JD he feels comfortable handing over. 

"He thinks something's wrong, doesn't he," Sam says. 

Cam sighs. "Yeah. Yeah, he does. Caught Ba'al on CNN a few weeks back --" He catches her nodding out of the corner of his eye; so JD's already been poking her for information on that. "And I don't know what you guys are doing about that, but he's nervous. Needed to know more than anyone could say on an open line."

"Yeah," she says. She sounds unhappy. "That's about the only thing that'd pull him back in, isn't it." She rubs a hand over her face. "I'll wait until we're all in the same room. I've got some bad news and some good news."

"Gimme the good news now," Cam says, because the resignation and weariness in her voice is making him nervous.

Sam makes herself smile. "The good news is that we're pretty sure Ba'al doesn't have any people in Homeworld." 

Cam whistles, soft and low. "If that's the good news --" he says.

"Yeah," Sam says. "It's been one of those years."

Cam's been dreading the moment when Sam and JD first come face-to-face for a while, but it turns out to be nothing like what he'd envisioned. He gets the car parked and brings her around the back entrance, the one that's a ramp, not steps. It opens up on the laundry room, and from there to the kitchen. JD's sitting at the kitchen table, laptop to hand, glass of red wine at his elbow. He's got three Tupperware containers spread out next to him (one of green and red pepper strips, one of baby carrots, one of hummus; they're both making a considerable effort to retrain their snacking habits). He's in jeans, socks, and a long-sleeved, high-necked black t-shirt, which is about three pieces more clothing than they usually bother with around the house.

His eyes come up, wary, when Cam leads Sam in. "Carter," he says. Cam can't read anything in his voice.

"Sir," Sam says -- automatic and always will be. Then stops herself. "JD."

Could cut the tension in the room with a knife. Cam says, "Doctor Scott, Rocky, ugh," which gets a smile out of JD -- they do Rocky down at the Drafthouse now and again, when the mood strikes; JD's been tapped to play Rocky twice so far and is always a crowd hit -- and walks over to the table. "Hey," he says, and leans down to kiss JD. It's what they always do when one of them gets home, and he's not going to pretend in front of Sam.

JD's a little tense, but Cam wasn't expecting anything else; he keeps the kiss quick, and then turns around. "You hungry?" he asks Sam.

She laughs. Makes herself laugh, Cam sees, but it's a laugh anyway. "We ate two hours ago."

Cam nods. "I'll make coffee, then," he says. Can't go wrong with coffee when you're going to be up all night talking.

"Sit," JD says, and gets up. "I'll get it." He heads over to take the beans out of the cabinet. Cam watches as he detours over to the stack of prescription bottles and pops three of them open. Muscle relaxant, neuropathic pain blocker, opioid -- two of those. Cam wasn't good enough at hiding the pain, then. He doesn't usually try to do it around JD, but JD's the only one he doesn't pretend around; Sam might be family, but he still doesn't want to give too much away.

JD pulls a shot glass down with the coffee fixings, splashes a single swallow of whiskey into it. Brings the handful of pills and the shot glass over and puts them on the table at Cam's side. Sam's settled herself down across from him; Cam can see her eyes widen a little at the booze -- dumb idea to combine alcohol and opioids, yeah, but it's either that or double the dosage again, and Cam's not too eager to go that route until and unless he has to. The whiskey just kicks the pills into working faster, without making him stupid.

"Figured out why homer keeps segfaulting," JD says over his shoulder, as he heads over to start grinding the coffee beans. All the machines in their home network are named after Simpsons characters. Cam hadn't argued; his suggestion had been NCAA basketball coaches, and JD had shot that one down quickly. "SCSI lock. I pulled the new drive back out and it's ticking right along now."

Sam's a little wild around the eyes; Cam remembers that O'Neill's supposed to be a technology idiot. He'd forgotten. "My fault?" Cam asks, because he thinks that JD's doing this on purpose, establishing points of differentiation.

"Nah. Bad terminator, not bad chaining. And I think there might be some buffer issues. I'll fuss with it later. Carter, you still take milk and sugar?" JD leans on the island. 

"Yeah," Sam says. Quiet. She's watching JD, and Cam would give a lot to know what she's thinking. "That'd be great. Thanks."

"Got some cookies, too," JD says. "Those little lemon things."

That perks her up a bit. "Oh, God, you've got Momma's lemon bars? Okay, yeah, dinner _was_ two hours ago."

That makes Cam laugh. The lemon bars have always been Sam's favorite, which is why he took the time to bake some of them yesterday. He wants her to be comfortable here; he wants her to feel welcome. It's his home, and it's important to him that his friends feel at home here too, especially since he doesn't have all that many real friends left anymore.

JD understands that, Cam thinks. The need to make welcome. He might not share it -- not in the same way; JD's welcome shows in different ways. But JD knows what's important to Cam, and what's important to Cam is important to JD. 

There's ten more minutes of semi-awkward conversation before Sam finally sighs. "Okay," she says -- to Cam, because she understands him too. "I've been fed, I've been watered, we can skip showing me my room and letting me take a shower. You've discharged your obligations and Momma won't haunt you. Let's just do this."

Cam opens his mouth -- yeah, okay, he does follow the rules of hospitality, but still, not right for her to set it out like that; feels like she's mocking. But JD's hand settles over his and squeezes, and Cam takes another look at Sam. She's looking a little ghostly, more than a little tired. Hell of a year, she'd said. Getting down to business is the kindest thing he can do for her right now. JD sees it.

"Landry," JD says. "Is he Trust?"

Sam takes a deep breath, blows it out. Closes her eyes. "No. The General cleared him a few months back. He's an idiot, but he's not dirty."

"The General" can only refer to O'Neill. "Okay," JD says. Apparently that's good enough for him. "You got people in the NID?"

Sam nods. "Barrett," she says, which apparently means something to JD, because he nods again. "He's trying. There are a few of us. Nothing official. Barrett, the General, me, Major Davis. Colonel Reynolds. Who was really confused about that message you sent him, by the way. I didn't tell him where it really came from. I guess you could call us a conspiracy."

JD laughs, free and clear. Cam loves that laugh every time he hears it. Sam looks up from her coffee and gives JD a blank look. "Wouldn't be the first time," JD says, and Sam's confusion doubles at the merry sound in his voice. "Anyone in Ba'al's camp? Anyone on the inside?"

Sam shakes her head. "We're holding that in reserve. Last person we tried to plant got very dead."

"Yeah," JD says. "Okay. Do you --"

The phone rings. JD makes a face and slides off the bench to pick it up. "Hold that thought," he says, to her, and to the receiver, "Yeah?"

Then his face changes, goes blank and locked-down. "Oh, shit," he says, and "sorry, ma'am," he says, and "God, no, I'm so sorry," he says, and Cam's heart stops. "Yeah, hold on," JD says, and he brings the phone over, and as he hands it to Cam, he takes Cam's hand and holds it tight. That's when Cam knows.

"Who?" Cam asks, his knuckles tight on the plastic of the cordless handset. Because it's Momma, it has to be Momma, and someone's gone.

Momma's crying. He can hear it in her voice, the sound of tears and of a wild, boundless grief. "Cameron," she says. "Honey, sit down."

"I'm sitting, Momma," he says. " _Who_?"

"It's Ash," Momma says. Two syllables that cut Cam down straight through. "We got -- they came -- It was a crash, honey, they shot his copter down, they say it was quick --"

"No," Cam says. "No." JD's hand is tight on his; he can see Sam looking nervous, see JD mouth a name, see Sam's face crumple. It all registers like a dim haze, because his world's narrowed down to Momma's voice on the other end of the line. "Oh, hell, Momma --"

Two weeks. Ash had two weeks left, and then he was going to come home to collect Cindy Lou and the kids and move them out to wherever he was stationed next, serve out the rest of his tour making young boys jump when he barked at them and teaching them how to love the sky. 

He feels like JD might crack his knuckles, holding on so hard, and he can't make himself loosen up. They always say it was quick. There's a script. Cam's seen it. He threw it away, the few times he insisted on being the man in the black car that pulls up in the driveway and ends the waiting. Threw it away, and said it plain, and then held on and waited while the family cried.

His head isn't on straight. "We'll be there as soon as we can," he says. "Missed the last flight out by now. We'll be on the first one in the morning."

Momma sniffs on the other end of the line, and the sound breaks his heart. "Yes, please," she says. And that just makes it worse, because Momma doesn't ask; Momma suggests and Momma hints and sometimes Momma flat-out orders, but Momma doesn't ask. "I need my boy home with me."

"Tell Cindy I love her," Cam says. "You tell Cindy I'm coming."

Two goddamn weeks. Two goddamn fucking weeks, and Cam's baby brother is dead, and oh, God, Cam can't breathe.

JD's talking to Sam, low-toned voice, and there are tears running down Sam's face and she's nodding. It's all happening far, far away. To someone else. Like all of this is happening to someone else. JD pulls his cell phone out of his back pocket and starts dialing one-handed. Cam hears "reservations" and "domestic" as JD makes his way through the IVR. 

"She'll like that," Momma says. "She'll --"

Her voice cracks, and Cam can hear her struggling for control, struggling to breathe. "Soon's we can," Cam promises. "You just hold on. I love you. We'll be there soon's we can."

He's repeating himself, but it doesn't matter. Momma says something else, but Cam can't quite hear that either. There's a dialtone in his ear a minute later. He clicks off the phone, automatically, and sets it down on the kitchen table. 

Sam reaches over the table to grab his other hand, the one JD's not crushing. "Cam," she says. "I'm so sorry --"

"She's pregnant," Cam says. "Cindy Lou. She's five damn months along."

"Oh, God." Sam breathes in. "I'm coming too. I'll stay as long as you need. I've got the leave. I never take it."

"Momma'll like that," Cam says. When he hears himself say it, hears the distant and detached sound of his own voice, he recognizes that he's probably in shock. Shakes himself a bit. Won't do anybody any good if he can't think. "We need to call for the --"

But no; JD's already on the phone with the airline, making the arrangements in a brisk, calm voice. "Pack," Cam says. "I need to pack."

JD presses the cell phone's mike against the side of his face as he turns his head. "I've got it. Sit," he says, command written clearly in every syllable, and then moves the phone back. "No, sorry. Thanks. Do you have anything arriving sooner? We don't mind a tight connection." 

Sam squeezes his hand. "Hang on a second," she says, and lets go. She saw where JD got the whiskey from; she pours a full shot this time, brings it back to him. "Here."

Cam knocks it back without thinking. It brings tears to his eyes; that's his story, and he's sticking to it. "God," he says. "Oh, God, Sam, my brother. My baby brother."

"I know," she says, her eyes swimming. "I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry."

The next couple of hours are nothing but a blur, between the grief and the drugs and the alcohol and the pain. There's all kinds of pain; physical, emotional, heart and soul. Cam remembers JD getting him up from the table, squirming his head and shoulders under Cam's arm (can't find his cane, can't make a grip, can't hold on to anything anymore) and getting him over to the couch to lie down. He remembers JD holding his face in both hands and speaking, slowly and clearly, but for the life of him he can't remember what JD said. He remembers Sam crouched next to the couch where he's lying, one of her hands in one of his and the other smoothing back his hair. 

He remembers voices and noises and he can't make a damn lick of sense out of any of them. Any more than he can make sense of a world where they can send people to other galaxies in the blink of an eye, but they can't keep a thirty-five-year-old father of three -- four -- from giving up his life to defend an acre of sand.

He snaps to when they're in the car, when they're on their way to the airport. He can't tell if he's losing time, or if he's just slept; the fact that he can't tell is a bad sign. JD parks them in short-term parking. It'll cost an arm and a leg when they get back; he opens his mouth to say something, but JD just glares at him. "I'm not leaving you, even long enough to park the car," he says. 

"Oh," Cam says. Presses a hand to his forehead. "Sorry. I'm just --"

"Yeah," JD says, and grabs both suitcases out of the trunk. "It's okay. I know."

First class seats (JD again) and it'll be an open-ended return ticket, Cam knows. Uncle Al meets them at the airport. Same flight. He sits down next to Cam; Sam's on one side, and JD had been on the other, but he'd carefully loosened his hand from Cam's grip to go get them coffee. (JD hasn't slept, Cam thinks. It's five in the morning. He wonders if JD's eaten.) "Cameron," Uncle Al says, his voice full of heartbreak. "I'm sorry."

Cam's starting to get tired of people saying that, and there's going to be more of it ahead. "S'alright," he says, even though it's not. Won't be for a damn long time.

JD crouches down in front of him, coffee in hand. "Here," he says, and presses it into Cam's hands. "Drink." He looks up at Uncle Al. "Sir."

Uncle Al reaches out and rests a hand on JD's shoulder. "Al," he corrects. "I'm glad you're here. Thank you for coming."

Some messy emotion flicks in JD's eyes, is set aside. "Couldn't not," he says. 

Uncle Al squeezes JD's shoulder, then lets go. "I know. Sassy and Cindy will be glad, too. It's a hard thing to bear."

He would know. Momma had four brothers; only three of them came home from Vietnam, and one of them came home in a coffin. And Uncle Al didn't come home until seven years later, and Cam's never heard him say word one about all those years as a prisoner of war. There've been Mitchells and kin in every war since the one that made them a country, and there's plenty of Mitchell blood been spilled to keep that country thriving.

Cam feels numb, and slow, and stupid. JD gets him on the plane. Sam in tow; Cam's dimly aware that she and JD are talking, that Uncle Al's listening, and Cam thinks he should be paying attention, that he might be missing something important, but he can't focus in on it. He sleeps through some of the flight; not all. The flight attendants' faces have sympathy and pity; that's Sam's touch, there, showing her military ID at the counter and asking for what help they can give. Making sure everyone knows to ease the way.

And they make it home, and Momma's crying and holding on (and she's so thin, so frail; when did Momma get to be so old?) and Cindy Lou is sitting hollow-eyed at the kitchen table and looking at nothing at all, and Daddy's sitting next to her and holding her hand, and Chandler and Stewart don't understand it all, but they understand that their daddy isn't coming home again. 

And Sam sits down next to Cindy and takes her other hand, and Cindy turns her face to Sam and breaks down on Sam's shoulder, and Cam knows Cindy's been trying to hold together, trying to hold on, even around family, but to have another woman there -- another woman who's grieving, but not grief-struck; another woman who's been there, who knows -- gives her leave to let go a bit. And JD picks Lucy up off the babyseat on the counter and settles her in the crook of his arm, tickles her toes and says soothing things to her, and the sound of a baby laughing isn't anything new to this kitchen, but Cam can't think of a time when it was any more needed.

There won't be a viewing. Momma's wrecked and she's not thinking clearly, can't take care of things the way she usually does, but she gets hold of herself long enough to explain that there wasn't enough left of the body (just an earthly shell, Cam thinks; his brother's already long gone) to make pretty. The notice in the paper will say that the family will be At Home to Visitors in lieu of a viewing; it won't run until tomorrow, but the neighbors don't need a notice to start ringing the doorbell as soon as afternoon comes. They all know what the car in the driveway means. The counter's lined with fresh-cut garden flowers by mid-afternoon; there's barely enough room in the refrigerator, in the freezer, for all the casserole dishes accumulating. The family's well-loved.

Late evening, Spence shows up at the door. He's in BDUs, and he's got two suitcases and two garment bags with him. Skipper's nowhere to be seen: offworld, Cam thinks; offworld, and he'll come home to find his cousin gone. Spence hands one of the suitcases and one of the garment bags to Sam, says something soft to her. She smiles. Must have gone over to her house in the Springs, Cam thinks, picked up some clothes and Sam's spare uniform; she's kept the house, closed up and waiting, in case she needs to go back. Nobody who's been touched by the Stargate program ever fully walks away. 

And Cam answers the door when the doorbell rings, and answers Chandler and Stewart's questions, or tries to, anyway -- _your daddy's gone, because sometimes when you do your duty, bad things happen, and there are bad people and good people all over this world and the people who did this aren't necessarily bad people, they're just trying to do their duty, too, and it's all complicated and hard to understand but your daddy loved you, baby, he loved you so much_ \-- and gets the casseroles in the oven at the right time to feed people and makes sure the coffee never runs low. He makes sure that Cindy Lou lies down -- _you get your body to bed right this minute, Cynthia Louise, because your baby needs you and you aren't going to let that go_ comes out of his mouth, and he sounds so much like Momma should that it makes his heart hurt -- and says all the right words to all the people who come calling. 

He thinks that he should take care of Momma, but no sooner does the thought cross his mind that he realizes Momma's sitting in the parlor, with Daddy to one hand and JD to the other. JD's found the baby-sling, and he's got Lucy tied up against his chest. She's sleeping. JD's got one hand on the back of her head, and Momma's clutching the other one tight. Cam stops in the doorway. JD looks up -- always knows when Cam's in the room. Doesn't smile, just nods once, and Cam knows that it's being taken care of.

They get through Saturday, and on to Sunday. They'll bury Ash on Monday. Cam was the one to spend the time on the phone with the funeral home, was the one to make all the arrangements, following down the lines of Momma's neat script in her event-of-emergency book. JD offered, but Cam had to do it himself. Momma's a wreck and Daddy's keeping her upright; they finally got through to Cindy Lou's doctor and got him to call in a prescription for something that won't hurt the baby as long as she doesn't take it for too long, and she's sleeping it off in a dark room with someone checking in on her every half-hour. Cam's the only other choice. 

He digs Chandler and Stewart's Easter suits out of the wreck they call a room. Makes sure they get fed, starts running them a bath. He's about to go supervise when Miranda stops him, puts her hands on both his shoulders. "You go sit," she says, firm and no-nonsense, and turns him (gently) around. "I can see how bad you're limping. I can handle the boys."

She's talking to him like he's about to come apart at the seams any second. Cam doesn't know why; he's holding up fine. He just hadn't noticed he was limping, is all. He remembers JD pressing pills into his hand at breakfast-time, again at lunch. But he's been on his feet all day, and he can't quite remember where he last saw his cane. 

Turns out his cane's in the kitchen, propped up against the wall, and Momma and Daddy are sitting at the table, along with Uncle Al and Spence and Sam and JD and Uncle Bayliss and Uncle Roy. Cam picks up the cane -- and yeah, once he's leaning on it, he realizes how much he fucking _hurts_ , but he's not quite done yet and if he sits down he's not going to get back up. And Momma says, her voice blurry (she hasn't been dipping into Cindy Lou's sedatives, Cam thinks, but there's a glass of brandy at her hand, and Daddy keeps nudging it close to her), "That's five."

"Told you I'd do it, Sassy," Uncle Roy says.

Momma shakes her head. "Not with your arm." 

Uncle Roy busted his arm a few weeks back getting Chandler out of a tree Stewart talked him up into. And that makes it make sense. They're settling pallbearers. 

Family tradition -- they have too many centered around death, Cam thinks, and he's conscious, somewhere, in the back of his mind, of a rage at the unfairness of the universe, so deep and so furious that it makes him shy away from even coming close to it -- says that the closest relatives, military or former, serve as escort. "I'll do it, Momma," he says. There shouldn't have been any question. His daddy can't, but Cam's still got both of his legs, even if they don't always do what he wants them to do. They'll be good enough to see his brother home to rest.

Momma looks up at him. Her eyes are red, Cam can see. "Honey," she says. "You can't."

"Don't you tell me what I can't do," he says. 

Something flutters, deep in his chest. Momma's face twists up. "You be practical now, Cameron," she says. 

Cam sets the mug of coffee he was pouring down on the counter with a clack. "I know what I can do," he says. "And I will do this. He's my brother, Momma."

"Cameron," she says, and closes her eyes. Exhausted, Cam thinks. He shouldn't be arguing with her. But he's not going to give in on this one. When she opens her eyes again, she looks at JD, a plea in her face. _Do something._

JD studies it, and then gets up. Cam's expecting reasoned words, an appeal to logic. He's not expecting JD to search his face, looking for something -- Cam can't tell what -- and, when he finds it, just nod.

Then JD moves, one quick flash, and kicks Cam's cane out from underneath him.

Cam goes down, and he goes down hard; spinning, pinwheeling his arms, headed for a bad landing and he can tell it. He's got just a fraction of a second to think _bastard, the bastard_ , and then JD's there: reaching to catch him the way he never does, taking Cam's weight on his arms and his chest, cushioning the landing and sinking to his knees with Cam cradled tight. And Cam thinks, _wanted to show me what would happen if I tripped,_ and Cam thinks, _Jesus, my legs hurt_ , and Cam thinks _my brother's dead_ , and he takes a deep breath in and lets it out on a howl along with all the tears he hasn't been able to cry.

JD turns them slightly, enough so that Cam's weight is resting on his good hip and not the bad one, and holds Cam's face against his shoulder. Cradling Cam's head like he'd cradle the baby, shielding Cam's grief, though there's no shame in honest tears. He doesn't say any of the things people trot out to try to soothe or comfort. No "it'll be all right" or useless shushing. He doesn't stroke Cam's hair or rock them back and forth. He just holds on, and Cam holds on too, and it takes him a surprisingly short time to cry out his grief.

When he's starting to do nothing more but sniffle, JD takes his hand away -- other arm's holding Cam up, and Cam doesn't want to move yet, and he knows JD won't make him -- and holds it out, and someone puts a tissue into it. They've got them handy just about everywhere in the house this week. JD presses it into Cam's hand, and Cam wipes his eyes and blows his nose and takes a deep breath. When he sits up, nobody's looking at him; they'll give him his space.

"I'll ask George," Momma says, picking up the conversation that was interrupted fifteen minutes ago like it never paused. 

"I'll do it," JD says. Quietly. Like he's expecting to be told no. But Momma's eye settles on him, and there's a minute when Cam thinks she might see straight through him, and then she nods.

They put what's left of Ash into the ground (ten bare steps away from where Cindy Lou's father's grave still has grass struggling to take root again; these things come in threes, Cam thinks, and then shivers and prays that Whoever keeps book wasn't listening) on a bright sunny Monday morning, the twenty-sixth of July, and everywhere Cam looks, there's someone in uniform. Cindy Lou's shining tall and proud, standing up under all eyes. She'll have told herself it's her duty now, to do Ash proud, to show that she knows he died with honor even if she can't understand why he had to. JD is the only one at the coffin's side wearing a suit, not a uniform, but he wears it like his dress blues and stands iron-straight. 

Cam thinks he might be the only one who sees JD take a half-step forward before catching himself, when the officers take hold of the edges of the flag to fold it. He's the only one who sees JD clasp his hands at the small of his back to keep himself from stepping in. Or maybe, he thinks, looking at Momma's face in the sunlight and the way her eyes narrow down, he's not the only one.

They go back to the house. The Christ Church Ladies' Auxiliary has taken care of the food for the reception, and Momma's calmer now, able to smile and say thank you, even when it doesn't meet the eyes. They follow tradition and tell outrageous stories and affectionate lies about Ash, from the time Cam convinced him (four years old) that he could dig a hole to China in the backyard, to the time (last leave) when he went out drinking with Carter and Skipper and they'd wound up accidentally ("that's my story and I'm sticking to it," Carter swears) stumbling into a tittie bar. 

It gets lighter to hold. Not easier; never easier. Just a little bit lighter. Funerals are for the living. Momma said, last month: grieve a while, and then go on. They're Mitchells. They go on.

Later that night, when the neighbors have all gone home and the family in residence has all gotten settled, Cam goes looking for JD and finds him sitting on the front porch: him in the swing, Sam and Spence circled around him in two of the chairs. They're in the middle of what sounds like a serious discussion, one that's been going on for a while; the front porch is for serious discussions. Cam wonders what he's been missing, these past few days: what's been said and done, what JD's found. Whether JD's mind's been set at ease, or stirred up more.

Cam stops at the door, not sure if he should interrupt, but JD holds out a hand without turning around to look. Cam takes it. Sam watches, but there's something different in her eye now, something speculative. JD tugs him close, and Cam settles in the porch swing, right where he sat not six months ago and got his brother's form of blessing and approval. He's glad, so glad, that Ash met JD. That Ash knew Cam was settled. That Ash didn't go with worry on his heart.

"Just a couple of missions," Spence is saying. "It could be coincidence. Landry thinks it's coincidence."

Sam cuffs him upside the head. The more time she spends here, the more Mitchell she picks up. "General Landry," she corrects. "He's your commanding officer, no matter what you think of him."

Spence ducks his head. "Yes ma'am. But the Lucian Alliance has some intel that we can't trace, and we're not sure where they're getting it. We've been pulled in three times this quarter for S&R, and I'm getting too good at breaking out of jail."

JD and Sam share a quick, knowing look. Sam's getting easier with JD, Cam thinks. Moving closer to seeing him as his own person, while still seeing the pieces of O'Neill that made him up. "Yeah," Sam says, wryly. "The SGC teaches you thousands of job skills you never thought you'd need to know."

"You need a guy on the inside," JD says. "Because if Ba'al's not behind this, I'll eat this swing."

"I know we do," Sam says. She sounds unhappy. "But the General won't authorize the op. Out of his mandate --"

"Never stopped him before," JD says, and Sam throws him an unreadable look.

"Out of his mandate," she repeats, more firmly, "and too dangerous for anyone who has any ties at all to the SGC."

Cam's been seeing this moment coming for a long damn time now, and he's been trying to duck it the whole damn way. But there's a house of sleeping people behind him. Good people; strong people. People who know about duty, and honor, and steadfastness, and what it means to be protectors. He's twelve hours away from having buried his brother, and his legs are burning and his spine aches like fire. But on Friday night, he stood in a parking garage and he told Sam that if God turned back time and he had it all to do over again, he would. 

And he's forgotten that for a little while, let pain and anger and shame ( _not good enough not smart enough not fast enough to save them_ , his boys and girls, every single last one of them, and him left over to bear witness) blind him. And in four more months, his brother's last baby is gonna be born, and Cam will by God not let it be into a world whose strings are being pulled by a man with a charming smile and a snake in his head.

JD's hand squeezes his. Cam looks up to find JD watching him. His eyes are a question. Cam gives the answer, but not to JD. 

"You tell the General," Cam says to Sam. "You tell him about us. And you tell him that if he can use us, we're in."


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> One foot in front of the other: sometimes, to go forward, you have to go back.
> 
> Or: Irresistable force, meet immovable object.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Originally [posted](https://synecdochic.dreamwidth.org/151764.html) 2007-09-15.)

## 

eight

Sam leaves on Tuesday morning. Headed back to Nevada, and if she could only get a flight connecting through National and an eight-hour layover, well, she booked at the last minute, and nobody will look twice if she decides to look up her old CO instead of sitting around the airport. Cam offers to drive her to the airport before he realizes he can't, that the car's not accessable and he (not thinking about why, not, _not_ ) really overdid it yesterday. 

He offers up Spence in his place, since Spence is scheduled for a midafternoon departure, but JD takes her instead. "I don't want you to have to --" Cam starts, but JD gives him The Look. 

"Shut it," JD says. It's a strange way of saying _I love you_ , but it's theirs.

The house is quiet today, at least. Quieter. Cindy Lou is up and about, and despite everyone's best efforts, she plants herself in the kitchen and bakes half-a-dozen loaves of bread and a rhubarb pie for dessert. Chandler sits on the counter next to her and adds flour to the wooden board she's kneading the dough out on. She keeps having to stop and touch him; there are flour handprints on his cheek, flour in his hair. 

Cam sits at the kitchen table, with his laptop and a mug of tea, and tries to make some headway with the ftp client he's working on. The lines of code refuse to coalesce; after the third time he fucks it up so badly that it won't even compile, he exits vim, closes the shell window, and opens up his poker software. Stewart comes over after a while and climbs up next to him. Cam's been teaching him the finer points of Hold-'Em. The kid cleans up; Cam suspects someone's been giving him lessons on the side. 

He hurts less than he thought he would. His brother is still dead, and there's nothing in the world that can make that be all right. But it's the next morning after, and the sun came up after all, and you put one foot in front of the other and keep on going.

JD returns from his errand just after lunch, with a bushel full of produce from the MacGregors' roadside stand, a baffled look on his face, and three tiny balls of fluff, cradled in the hem of his shirt, trying to use him as a climbing-post. "I don't know how it happened," he says, perplexed straight through. "I kept saying no. I think that woman has mind control powers."

The MacGregors do have scary mind control powers; it's how everyone in the county's wound up with a kitten, one time or another. Nobody's been able to trap the momma cat to get her fixed. "I can take them back," JD says, when Momma comes wandering in and gives him the eyebrow. "I shouldn't have --" 

But Stewart's sitting on the floor of the kitchen, dangling a piece of yarn for the orange kitten to chase after, and he's actually laughing, and Momma's face softens. "Good thing we still have some dry food lying around," she says. Later on, Cam catches her with the grey-and-white runt of the litter in her lap, blissful kitty paws kneading Momma's thighs with tiny needle claws, and he thinks JD might have known what he was doing the whole time.

They stay through until Friday; Cindy's still shaky, but she's the one to chase them out. "Get," she says. "You've got things to be doing. I'm glad you were here, and I'm glad I've got you. But go home. Ash wouldn't want you to put your lives on pause forever."

In some families, the dead man's ghost gets conjured as an excuse for whatever the speaker wants to support. Not theirs. For Cindy to say it -- because it's true; even if it is the kind of thing that usually gets said by clueless acquaintances offering clumsy comfort, Ash _wouldn't_ want Cam to wreck himself grieving, and everyone there knows it -- means that she's going to be all right. Eventually.

"We'll come back when the baby's born," Cam says, putting an arm around her shoulders and resting his cheek against her hair. "And if you want to send us the demon children, we've got a spare bedroom."

Cindy laughs, and it's only a little bit hollow. "Take them now," she says. "I'll sell them cheap."

Getting back home, back into their routine, does help, especially when -- four days after they're settled back in -- the Navy calls them up and awards them the contract they'd bid on. Cam's a little bit shocked; he hadn't expected they'd get it at all, much less so quickly. It kicks off a flurry of frantic activity: blueprints spread out over every available surface (they've both figured out AutoCAD well enough to make it do what they want it to do, but JD's got a draftsman's hand and a purist's work ethic; he insists on doing it the old-fashioned way) and sixteen-hour days with reference books and circuit diagrams everywhere. 

He and JD fall back into their work mode easily (bickering about the circuit-board logic flow, bickering about the specs, bickering about whether they're going to design from scratch or adapt an off-the-shelf system, bickering about the division of labor between working on the handheld unit and working on the controlling software), and it isn't until three weeks later that Cam looks up from the dinner he's thrown together for them both and says, "Have you heard from Sam?"

JD snaps his fingers. "She called yesterday," he says. "I was in the middle of supplier hell when she called, forgot about it as soon as she hung up. She's working on O'Neill. He says he's got it under control and doesn't need any help from, and I quote, 'a bunch of damn civilians'." JD's lips twist into something with only superficial resemblance to a smile. "I told her to tell him where to shove his civilian."

"Maybe he doesn't need us," Cam says. "Maybe they really do have it under control."

JD shakes his head. "He needs us," he says, tight and grim. "He's just trying to convince himself that he doesn't. Give it time. I only hope we've got it."

They don't talk about it otherwise. Haven't talked about it yet, probably won't, not until the time comes. They both know, now, that believing either one of them could walk away is naiveté of the highest order. Or rather, believing that either one of them could stay away. 

Cam thinks that neither one of them are the people they were a year ago. It makes him stop and take stock. They've cleaned off one tiny corner of the kitchen table to eat at, and JD's sitting there with the ever-present book in one hand (one of Heinlein's juveniles; Cam has long since given up on trying to pin down JD's taste) and his fork in the other, head bowed. The setting sun streaming in through the bay windows sets his hair on fire. It makes Cam's throat tight.

"I love you," he finds himself saying. 

JD looks up, his face unguarded and open. "I love you too," he says, automatically. "What was that for?"

"Nothing," Cam says. "I just --" He makes a gesture with one hand, taking in the kitchen, the house, their life. "You know."

And JD smiles. He puts down the book and reaches across the table, taking Cam's hand in his own, rubbing his thumb over the back of Cam's knuckles. "Yeah," he says. "I think I do."

One of the twins, whichever one's on-world, makes sure to check in weekly -- not status reports, nothing so overt, but just a quick reassurance that they're still there and still okay. It's partially a courtesy, since both Cam and JD know what can happen at the SGC, and partially the relief that comes from having some member of the family actually know what they are and what they're doing, someone they don't have to lie to. Cam remembers those days. 

He's the first in the family to know that Skipper's bound for Atlantis after all; he's the only one in the family to know that it's Atlantis, and not some mysterious overseas assignment. Cam's pretty sure Sam's keeping an eye out for the twins, too -- she's stationed at Area 51 still, but the Mountain's got a long arm. He calls her up when he hears and says, straight out, "How dangerous is it?"

She hesitates a second, and in that hesitation, he can read the true answer. "Dangerous," she finally says. "More than the Mountain. But they can really use him. Sheppard's drowning out there, and Pegasus could really use someone who's competent and sneaky and just a little bit underhanded."

"Well, that's Skipper, all right," Cam says, and tries to push away the little frisson of worry. 

"I'll make sure I keep an ear out," Sam says, and he can hear, in her voice, the sound of her knowing he's worried.

Skipper ships out at the end of August, and Spence starts calling more often after that. Cam hears the loneliness in his voice; it's not the first time they've been stationed in two different places, but it's the first time in a while, since most of their commanders recognize they work better in a pair. He says comforting things at first, until he realizes that Spence is really just looking for someone to listen, and after that he's treated to weekly parades of who's pissed off whom and who's won money off of who else. He relays the news to JD, who cracks up half the time and looks thoughtful the other half.

They go back to North Carolina for Labor Day weekend. They're greeted by a kitten trying to climb up each of JD's legs -- Cam masterfully suppresses a snicker at the look on his face -- and a house that's subdued, but within the parameters of normal. Cindy's as big as houses and alternating between being cranky as all get-out, bursting into tears at the drop of a hat, and hiding in her room to get away from it all. Cam's been keeping in touch, of course, but Momma hadn't mentioned how bad it was. 

"She's all right," Momma says, when Cam brings it up, as gently as he can. "Just tired, is all."

It's Momma's wishing-makes-it-so, voice, though, and Cam's troubled by it. JD's troubled by it, too. That night, JD is the one to say, "We should come work up here for a few months when the baby's born."

Cam rolls over to face him. "I thought I might be imagining it."

JD shakes his head. "You're not," he says, low and soft. "She's not as okay as she wants herself to be. Either your momma, or Cindy. Could use another pair of hands."

"We gonna be okay to come work up here?" Cam asks. He wants to; there are some things family's supposed to do without being called on, without being asked. But he's not just asking about whether or not they can stand to concentrate in this madhouse; he's asking if JD thinks he can handle the constant background strain of quasi-disapproval. It's getting better, will continue to get better the longer the family sees JD's not going anywhere. But it's wearying for _him_ , and he's not the one that's the target of all the thoughtful looks.

"It'll be fine," JD says. Cam falls asleep with JD's fingertips resting against his face and the rhythm of love beating in his heart.

Back home, and three days later they're on a plane to Washington for a no-notice face-to-face with their clients to deal with settling a change request; JD offers to come along, and Cam says yes without having to think about it, because for all that JD swears he's going to let Cam handle the business end of things, JD's better at it half-asleep than Cam is at full alert. With all the travel they've done this year, it's enough to kick them into being preferred-class flyers, which is nice -- free upgrades -- and they score an amazing last-minute deal at the Pentagon City Ritz-Carlton, which is a full two stars up from the Hotel Washington, where Cam usually stays when he's in town. 

Cam almost doesn't want to amputate his own legs at the hip by the time they get unpacked and settled in, which is a nice change. "I could get used to this," he says, as they're waiting for the room service (he doesn't feel _that_ good; room service is a better option than trying to drag his carcass out to dinner, and while he'll cheerfully send JD out to get takeout tomorrow and the next day, he thinks JD might want to chill out and relax too). 

JD laughs at him, soft and sweet. "When we're rich, I'll put you up in five-star hotels worldwide," he assures Cam, and Cam rolls over on the bed and props his chin up on his hands. He doesn't think JD's kidding. He's figured for a while that JD's master plan involves making a shitpot of money. He's just waiting for JD to tell him what that master plan is.

They're halfway through dinner when the knock sounds on the door again. Cam frowns -- it's not the kind of place that comes to collect the room service dishes without being called -- and JD gets up to answer. Cam can just see his hand ghosting over the small of his back, then falling away. They don't talk about the fact that they both keep handguns, or about the fact that JD can always lay his hands on his piece within minutes when they're at home, or about the fact that Cam knows JD always checks his clutch piece in luggage when they travel, even when they're going back to North Carolina -- though when they're in the house, JD keeps his piece in a lockbox in their suitcases, and Cam knows full well why. They don't talk about the fact that JD's a paranoid son of a bitch, and they don't talk about all the times JD's paranoia saved his skin in the past. It is simply a fact of their lives.

But JD checks the peephole, and Cam can see, by the sudden tautness of his shoulders, that their visitor might not be a danger, but is certainly unwelcome. He undoes the chain and opens the door. Cam can't see who it is, but JD's voice is ugly as he says, "It's considered polite to call ahead first."

The voice that answers isn't the same timbre, but it's identical in tone. "You woulda let me in if I had?"

"Probably not," JD says. He holds open the door and steps back, and General O'Neill walks in. 

O'Neill's dressed in a pair of beat-up jeans and a button-down flannel shirt, looking like he'd be perfectly at home in backwater nowhere and sticking out like a sore thumb in DC. Cam watches O'Neill's eyes -- flick, flick, _flick_ , taking in every inch of detail of the room, from the single suitcase to the king-sized bed. 

Cam fights the urge to spring to his feet and salute. "Sir," he says, warily.

O'Neill spares him a look. "Mitchell."

It's surreal. It's beyond surreal. Cam _knows_ that tone when it comes from JD -- it's the "annoyed and put-upon" voice -- and he shouldn't know it from O'Neill, but he does. 

"Well, you brought me home to meet _your_ parents," JD says to Cam, irritated sing-song. "Guess it's my turn to return the favor. Something to drink, General? I won't even poison it."

The tension in the room is thick enough to cut with a knife. Cam reaches out a hand; JD's standing just close enough for Cam to snag him by the back of the jeans, drag him out of O'Neill's personal space. "Truce," he says, and he catches JD biting his lip. JD doesn't want to be an asshole, Cam thinks. There's just something about O'Neill that brings out the worst in him.

"Right," JD says. Clears his throat. "I assume you made sure you weren't followed."

O'Neill throws JD a seriously annoyed look. "Teach your grandma to suck eggs," he says. "Carter says you two want in."

JD opens his mouth to say something, but Cam cuts him off. "If you need us," Cam says. "Seems to me like you could use someone who isn't bound by the same rules you are."

"Maybe," O'Neill says. It's dragged out of him, like a concession. His being here is concession enough, Cam thinks. And a sign that whatever O'Neill's dealing with is big; big enough for him to break the treaty of mutually benevolent ignorance he and JD had wordlessly agreed on. 

"Pull up a chair," Cam says. JD throws him a look; it's unreadable. 

O'Neill stays standing. "You're in the middle of dinner. I'll come back."

"Pull up a chair," Cam repeats. He grabs his cane, which is sitting up against the wall, and uses it to skin past O'Neill's hip and snag the desk chair to drag it up to the table. "You came this far. We'll listen."

O'Neill hesitates, like he's about to say something, and then sits. He's still dividing his attention between Cam and JD, like there's something bothering him, and Cam thinks about all the things he knows about Jack O'Neill, all the pieces of him reflected in JD's eyes.

"So," JD says, into the awkward silence. "How's Washington working out for you?"

Something sparks in O'Neill's eyes, something that tells Cam JD's question is equal parts insult and taunt, but he matches pleasantry for pleasantry. "Just fine. How's sodomy working out for you?" 

"Jesus," Cam says, before he can catch himself. He's still holding his cane; he raps it across JD's shins. "Behave. I mean it."

He sees the look pass between them. It doesn't take much for him to interpret O'Neill's shock as a question -- _you gonna put up with that?_ \-- and JD's smirk as an answer -- _you'd be surprised what I'm willing to put up with_. O'Neill's body language is practically screaming awkwardness. Sam might have hinted at what lies between the two of them, and Cam knows full well that O'Neill would have checked them out, would have known they'd bought property together and started to comingle their lives. But it could have been explained away. O'Neill wouldn't have wanted to believe that his clone could have the things O'Neill always wanted.

Cam makes his voice as matter-of-fact as he can when he turns back to O'Neill. "I'm not sleeping with you," he says. "So I can't hit you. Yet. Don't push it. Either of you. I'm not above throwing ice water in someone's face."

O'Neill's face is going through a range of contortions, from outrage to shock. Cam's not above admitting that he's almost enjoying it, in the little malicious corner of his mind that he tries to avoid letting control much of anything. It's not that he feels uncharitable towards O'Neill -- far from it; how could he, when JD _is_ O'Neill, or was, and he knows that all the best parts of his lover were formed in the crucible of the man who's sitting here at their table with them. It's just that JD is practically radiating distress, like the two of them are two halves of a fusion bomb circling ever nearer before the explosion, and Cam knows which side he'll come down on if it comes down to it.

So he has to make sure it won't come down to it. He reaches over and grabs JD by the jeans again, dumps him into the other chair at the table. JD goes, willingly enough, though he gives Cam a Look-with-a-capital-L: _watch it_. Cam looks back ( _we both knew full well this could happen, so suck it up and soldier, soldier_ ) and reaches over to twine his fingers with JD's. O'Neill looks away, quickly, fixing his eyes on a point over Cam's left shoulder. JD sees it and smirks, hooking one of his knees up over the arm of the chair and slouching. 

Cam sighs, but he lets it go and doesn't call JD on it. None of his business if JD wants to antagonize O'Neill, except if it's bad enough to make O'Neill not want to call on them if O'Neill needs them. And if O'Neill's here, it means that O'Neill's willing to at least entertain the idea that he needs them. "Tell us what you need," Cam says.

O'Neill sighs. "Maybe nothing. Maybe a hell of a lot. I came here to see how serious you two are."

"Deadly," JD says. All the sullenness is gone from his voice, as though it never were; he's still slouching, but it's a different kind of slouch, the coiled tension of a spring waiting to be released. "You know why."

Something passes between them. Cam can't read it, as much as he tries. It's disconcerting. He can read JD like an open book; it's just that half the time, the book might as well be written in Greek. "You remember," O'Neill says. Cam doesn't know what he's referring to.

JD nods, once, just a quick jerk of the chin. "I remember," he says. "Nightmares stopped a while ago, but some things you don't forget."

O'Neill sighs again, and when he rubs a hand over his face, Cam knows it for JD's gesture of capitulation. "All right," he says. "Ba'al's got people planted. Not in the SGC, not in Homeworld. I'm keeping a close enough eye on that, and Carter's managed to finally put together that handheld _naquadah_ detector she's been working on for years. But it won't pick up humans who have --"

"Conrad," JD says. 

"--decided to cooperate, yeah. And God only knows who's on the payroll. We've gotten what we can out of Farrow-Marshall, but we can't get people on the inside."

"Sam said the last people who tried wound up dead," Cam says.

O'Neill's lips twist wryly. "Carter talks too much. Yeah. Picked out one of the best deep-cover operatives we had and tried to send him in. We got back his hands. Packed in dry ice. Sent to my office."

"Personal," JD says, quietly. "He's making it personal."

"It's already personal," O'Neill corrects. "It came with a warning. An ultimatum. If we don't interfere with him, he'll let us go on thinking we run the place. If we get in his way?"

He doesn't need to finish the sentence. Cam looks at JD; there's the faintest of tremors running through JD's body, like the quiver of a live wire or an electrical circuit. "What's his game?" JD asks.

O'Neill shakes his head. "Nobody knows. I can't catch a clue. Best guess is that he's trying to rebuild his empire, and he wants to start here."

Cam winces. He doesn't know what the political situation is like out in the galaxy-at-large, but he thinks JD does. JD's good at putting together pieces, and Sam and Spence and whatever other conduits of information JD still has have been giving him pieces for weeks now. 

JD's chewing his lower lip, and his eyes are thoughtful. "Makes sense," he says. "First world. Jaffa?"

O'Neill shakes his head again. "Can't spot any. Not a guarantee, though."

"Yeah," JD says. "Gotcha."

They've forgotten Cam's here. He settles himself back in the chair and watches the two of them; it's a little bit like watching an echo, watching a mirror. The body language is the same, but it's twisted and distorted by circumstance. It's just enough to tell him that O'Neill's seriously uncomfortable but suppressing it, that JD is just as uncomfortable but is starting to become interested.

O'Neill's also watching JD like a hawk, trying to sift through the cues and tells for the answer to a question Cam hasn't quite yet managed to identify. "Can't do it myself," O'Neill says. Cam can tell the admission costs him.

Whatever the question is, JD knows it. His eyes go flat. "I'm out," he says.

"You offered to put yourself back in," O'Neill says. 

Cam's missing about eighty percent of this conversation. It doesn't matter. JD will tell him later. "Hell," JD says, and his fingers tighten on Cam's. "Fuck you, you know. Just -- fuck yourself with a chainsaw."

It's not vicious, just weary capitulation. O'Neill relaxes, fractionally; Cam sees it in the easing of his shoulders, the same way JD telegraphs his resignation. "Wouldn't ask," O'Neill says. _Wouldn't ask if it wasn't important._

"Wouldn't accept," JD says. _Wouldn't accept if I didn't know it was._ "Damn you. I have a life. I have a _family_." 

It's a balm to Cam's ears, but it's a bullet to O'Neill's. Cam can see his shoulders go back up, the tightening of his face. Watching it, Cam wonders how much JD was lying -- not consciously, but lying anyway -- when he said that he didn't realize how much his old life was binding him until that life was taken away. O'Neill knows, Cam thinks. O'Neill knows, and he grieves it.

"If you're not in --" O'Neill starts, but JD's shaking his head.

"You know I am," JD says, low and vicious. "And you know why. But this is it. One op. Nothing more."

He doesn't need to look to Cam for permission; they've already agreed. But they're both talking as though it's just JD, and Cam won't have that. "We are," he corrects, and both men turn to him with identical blank looks. "I'm not sending him off blind. Full disclosure, or nothing."

It's not enough. He'll still lie awake at night with the worst-case scenario running through his head. But they talked about this, and no matter what Cam wants, no matter how much Cam wishes it were otherwise, there's just no way on Earth or elsewhere that he's anywhere near able-bodied enough to pull of something of the magnitude they both know is going to be required. And he won't cripple JD by making him constantly have to watch over his shoulder to make sure Cam's all right.

It kills him to know that he's going to have to send JD off into the lion's den, and it kills him more to know that he's going to have to come up with some explanation for the family, something that makes sense. Something that doesn't even come close to the truth of what it is: that Cam will be left on the widow's walk, waiting for his soldier to come back home.

O'Neill and JD both open their mouths, same time, but Cam doesn't want to hear what either one of them is going to say. "No," he says, cutting them both off. "My price. You bring me in, too. I know I can't go along with him, but I'm not stupid and I'm not just going to sit back and wait. I'm in." 

JD's fingers tense on his, then ease. O'Neill's studying his face, like he's trying to understand, like he can learn to read Cam in those few moments the way it took JD months to be able to. Maybe he can. His eyes dart down to their joined hands again, and when he looks back up, for half a heartbeat, Cam can see naked pain and longing written there before it's stuffed away. 

"It'll take some time to build a cover," O'Neill says. Capitulation, agreement.

JD snorts. "Let me take care of it. I'm better at it than your people would be." _Than you would be_ , but JD doesn't say that. A courtesy only. Cam knows O'Neill can hear what's not being said.

"You going to be able to do this?" O'Neill asks. And there's history there, history Cam doesn't understand and is going to have to ask about. But not now.

JD meets O'Neill's eyes, clearly, with resolve. "Don't have much choice, do I?" he asks. 

Because that's the long and the short of it. They _don't_ have a choice -- they've agreed on that much, at least. If Ba'al is making a play for Earth, there's no way they can stand back and not do anything. Cam almost envies JD, because he can be the one to actually do something about it. This close, facing it, he's starting to ache already, down in the pit of his heart. 

"If we had a choice, I wouldn't be here," O'Neill says, and Cam hadn't expected a bald confession like that, but of course it's true; O'Neill probably wants to be here about as much as they want him here. "You keeping your skills up to date?"

JD nods. "More than you, probably," he says. It could be antagonistic, could be nasty, but it's not; it's a simple declaration of fact. JD is younger, probably stronger. His teenager's body will do things that O'Neill's body forgot long ago. "About the level we were in Poland."

Some shadow of memory crosses O'Neill's face, at the mention of their shared past or even just at JD's choice of pronoun. "It'll have to do," O'Neill says, crisp and short, and stands. It's JD's gesture, the sudden need to be _up_ and _out_ , and Cam's heart aches for him. "I'll be in touch. Your email server's secure?"

"As secure as I can make it," JD says, and Cam thinks that might be pity in his voice, well-hidden. Or maybe it's just empathy, or understanding. 

O'Neill nods. To both of them. "Don't call me," he says, "I'll call you," and strides across the room. To anyone else, it would be the motion of a man in supreme control: of his life, of himself, of the situation. Cam only knows it for a lie because of all the time he spent learning all the ways JD's body lies to him.

"Jack," JD says, softly, just as O'Neill's hand closes on the doorknob. O'Neill's shoulders stiffen, like he's been shot in the heart. He doesn't turn around. 

JD waits a second, to see if O'Neill will say anything. O'Neill doesn't. When JD speaks again, there are acres of compassion in his voice, and Cam can't understand a word of it. 

"You'd better," O'Neill says, and the door clicks shut behind him.

The silence stretches out. JD's face is pensive, like he's turning something over and over again in his mind. "What'd you say?" Cam asks, when JD doesn't say anything.

JD focuses back in on him. "What? Oh. That I'd take care of it."

It's not quite it -- if it had been something that simple, JD wouldn't have dipped into one of the languages Cam doesn't understand -- but Cam won't push. "You okay?" he asks instead. 

"Yeah," JD says, after a minute of careful consideration. "Yeah. I think I kind of am." 

Cam nods. Dinner's gone cold, and he's lost his appetite anyhow; he pushes back his chair, picks up his cane and heads for his side of the bed. The laptop's on the bedside table; he can get a few hours of coding in, catch an early bedtime and be ready for their meeting tomorrow. But once he gets settled, he finds himself watching JD, who's sitting at the table still and staring off into space.

"You wanna talk about it?" Cam offers, after fifteen minutes or so, and JD shakes himself at the sound of Cam's voice and comes over to sit on the other side of the bed.

"I need to tell you," JD says, each word sounding as though it's being dragged out of the places of his head where he just doesn't let himself go anymore, "about what Ba'al did to me."

It's a sordid little story of knives and acid and a thousand other things that can be done to the human body, over and over again. It's a story about a Tok'ra (and that's a shock; Cam hadn't known, hadn't even suspected) and a Goa'uld and a woman. JD's voice is soft and even, control layered over a deep aching chasm Cam can only sense the edges of, and JD strips off his shirt and touches tiny sections of his sea of ink with the tips of his fingers and tells Cam, slowly, what each of them mean. 

His fingertips hover over one symbol, the one Cam thinks might stand for Daniel Jackson, and then fall away. Something else there. Something Cam won't ask about, and JD won't tell him, and Cam tries hard not to be hurt, not to push, because he's known since the beginning that he doesn't own all of JD. Just the parts JD will let him see. It's enough -- it _is_ ; he isn't just telling himself that -- and JD's carrying a heavy enough burden; Cam won't add to it.

"Come here," Cam says, when JD's voice trails off and his eyes say that he's somewhere else, down in the places inside his head that should be marked 'here there be dragons'. JD takes a deep breath and then comes, swarming into Cam's space and wrapping arms and legs around anything he can reach so fiercely Cam thinks he might be strangling. 

He doesn't mind, though. He kisses JD's shoulders, and JD breathes out rough and ragged, and they only stay like that a minute before JD's stripping Cam's clothes off with urgent hands. His mouth burns against Cam's skin, and his hands are rough, demanding. It's the first time Cam remembers JD ever treating him with anything less than perfect care.

"I'm sorry," JD says, afterwards, lying on his back and staring at the ceiling. _Sorry for forgetting. Sorry for pushing you._

Cam snorts. "Shut it," he says. _Don't be an idiot. I love you._

They go to the meeting with their Navy liaison. It's obnoxious and boring and Cam wants to shoot something halfway through; he and JD occupy themselves by playing Buzzword Bingo with their eyes, and when the liaison actually manages to come out with a single sentence that includes, in all sincerity, "synergy", "leverage" (used as a verb, of course) and "dynamic", Cam nearly has to excuse himself so he can go crack up in the hallway. 

O'Neill emails them both and says he'll leave the cover story in JD's hands. JD isn't saying much, but he does say it's going to take him a while to get things set up; he doesn't give a time frame, but Cam's thinking, from the way he talks about it, that he means months instead of weeks. There's a little comfort in that, at least.

Comfort enough to get them back home and through another few days of work -- and oh, God, Cam's realizing that he's probably going to have to finish up this contract by himself, and that's going to suck _royal donkey balls_ ; maybe he can persuade Sam to take some of her banked leave and come on out and help him. JD throws himself into the task at hand, but there are dark circles under his eyes and he's not sleeping. Cam does his best not to hover. JD's a grown man, and can manage his own affairs. 

Hovering is in Cam's blood, though, and it's hard for him to repress it. He cooks the meals and sends JD out to run -- though JD's quite willing to be sent; Cam thinks JD's been slowly stepping up his workout routine over the past few weeks, quietly and without fanfare -- and makes sure JD's at least _in bed_ at a reasonable hour, even if he's not _asleep_. He's trying not to hover, but JD can see the concern anyway, and he thinks -- maybe -- JD's comforted by it.

They don't talk about it. About any of it. They're going to have to, but every time Cam thinks about opening his mouth and suggesting that _now_ would be a good time to have The Discussion, JD tells him no with an arch of the eyebrows and a twitch of the lips, and Cam lets it go. He's going to spend the rest of his life learning the roadmap of JD, but he's learned enough to know when JD's working something out. At least JD's working it out _here_ , instead of somewhere else.

And then it's the middle of September, and the phone call comes one bright sunny Saturday morning, and it takes them a few hours to get everything packed up and the keys turned over to Miss Ella next door and all of the appropriate papers and books and tools dropped off at the FedEx center for second-day shipping. When Cam turns on his cell phone after they're wheels-down at Raleigh, it's to find a voice mail message waiting for him; despite all their best efforts, they're just a little bit too late. 

They name the baby Ashton James, and they'll call him AJ. He's got his daddy's eyes and his momma's nose, and holding him in the hospital, feeling that tiny grip fixed around his finger and listening to him gurgle, Cam thinks: it's going to be all right.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Babies and baking make a strange juxtaposition with undercover mission prep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Originally [posted](https://synecdochic.dreamwidth.org/152245.html) 2007-09-18.)

## 

nine

Five adults and eight kids all in residence makes for a hell of a lot of noise. By Wednesday, which is the fourth day straight where Lucy -- who's crawling now, and has moved on to a tentative exploration of the joys of her own two feet, if she has something to pull herself up with -- nearly drags somebody's laptop off the surface of the spare bedroom they're using as an office, JD has a quiet word with Momma. 

An hour later, he's running phone cable out to the workshop in the back; an hour after he's done with that, Momma must have put the word out on the family grapevine, because Ricky and Jim and Jessie turn up and start hauling things. The family's teenagers and JD have established a mutually wary pact of ignoring each other; JD doesn't speak their idiom, either body language or slang, and they know there's something wrong about him. But it's long since been family custom to bribe young bodies into doing the heavy lifting.

The workshop's an office by late afternoon, and not soon enough, because Cindy and AJ get sprung from the hospital after dinner and AJ -- for all that the doctors kept him for five days, fearing the faint echo on his heart monitor was something serious -- has a set of lungs on him that won't quit. Cam expects Cindy to take it in stride, the way she did when Lucy was born; all of their children yelled their damn fool heads off for at least the first month or two of their lives. Cindy's pale and short of breath, though, and watching her, Cam thinks they didn't just keep Cindy at the hospital to let her bond with AJ.

Momma's dancing around ordering Cindy to bed, which is unlike Momma, but she's been giving Cindy wide leeway since Ash died. Cam knows why -- Momma doesn't want to give Cindy the impression she thinks Cindy's not capable -- but if there ever was a time for a dose of Momma's pragmatism, it's now. AJ's screaming, Cindy looks near to tears, and Miranda's trying her best to get both Cindy and AJ down for a nap, but Miranda's got Jason to deal with (of an age with Lucy, but a little behind her on the development curve) and Jason thinks that if AJ can scream, so can he. It kicks off Keith (who belongs to Cousin Elizabeth, who finally wised up and kicked Keith's father out the door, right before Elizabeth's number came up and she got shipped out), and the next thing anybody knows there's three screaming babies and Lucy looks like she might be gearing up to chime in.

JD saves the day before anybody else can do much more than take a deep breath. He takes AJ out of Cindy's arms and cradles him up against his chest. "No screaming," JD says, light and mild. "Your momma's head will fall off her neck." AJ, bless the saints, shuts his mouth between one wail and the next. JD looks at Jason. "That goes for you too, kiddo."

Jason cuts off mid-howl. "Oh, thank God," Miranda says, and scoops him up to prop on her hip. "Someone find me a gag."

She means a pacifier -- family joke -- and Cam fetches one from the bowl of baby stuff that's on the counter. In a minute, Momma's got Keith, Miranda's got Jason, Cindy's got Lucy, and Cam's got the kettle on the stove to make a round of chamomile tea for everyone. 

He puts a shot of bourbon in Momma's; she's earned it (and God only knows how Momma managed to deal with him _and_ Ash at the same time, with Daddy on assignment; Gran'ma helped, Cam knows, but he doesn't doubt for a minute that the two of them were more than a double handful). He hugs Cindy, tells her he loves her, tells her Chandler and Stewart are off in the treehouse in the woods under the perfectly adequate supervision of Ricky and Jessie, and gets her and Lucy off upstairs to get some bonding time, by which (he hopes) he means "double nap". 

When he gets back in the kitchen, Miranda's taken Jason off for his own nap, Momma's got Keith in a babyseat on the kitchen table and is rocking it with one hand while she sips the last of her tea with the other, and JD's pacing the floorboards with AJ's head cradled against his shoulder, bouncing him gently and talking to him in calm, low tones. Momma's watching him like a hawk, but she can't fault his handling; AJ's quiet, and that's something the pediatric nurses hadn't quite managed to accomplish any of the times they went to visit the hospital.

Cam slumps into the chair next to Momma and picks up his own tea, which is, of course, thoroughly cold by now. "We're moving to Montana," he announces, to the kitchen at large.

He's been threatening to move to Montana (three people per square mile, and eighteen cows) since he was in his early twenties, which is when the latest round of the familial baby boom started in earnest. Momma laughs, the same way she always does. "Won't do you any good," she says. "We'll just ship 'em FedEx."

"Contents may settle during shipping," JD says. 

"Please God, may the contents settle _sometime this year_ ," Cam counters. He drags his hands over his face. "God, Momma, tell me we weren't this bad."

"You were worse," Momma says. "'Specially once you got your teeth in. You bit."

Been a long time since Cam's been in the house with a newborn -- he usually managed to duck the worst of it, stationed here and there and everywhere -- and he'd forgotten the part where nobody sleeps through the night, much less the baby, for the first few months. By two weeks in, everyone's exhausted and on edge; everyone in the house takes turns getting up when AJ yowls -- there are baby monitors in every bedroom -- but even if it's not your turn, you wake up anyway. 

Cam's just about at the point where he's wondering how normal people do it with just _two_ parents, let alone an entire damn house -- and yeah, they've got nine kids total and four under the age of two right now, but AJ's more work than the other eight all put together -- when he wakes up in the middle of the night to JD sliding soundlessly out of bed (dislodging the kitten who was sleeping between them) and pulling on a t-shirt.

He's mostly asleep, still, but he can't hear anything from the baby monitor. "Hmm?" he asks, and JD's hand lingers on his hair for one brief second.

"It's okay," JD says. "Go back to sleep. The Mouth's about to serenade us." 

"Hmm," Cam agrees, and closes his eyes again. A minute later, he hears little whimpers from the intercom, the sound that presages a full-on explosion, and a minute after that, just as AJ's warming up, he hears JD's footsteps and soft voice, too indistinct for him to make out any words. He drifts back off with a smile on his face.

It stops being Night of the Living Dead sooner or later; they even manage to get some work done, though it only takes a few times of AJ starting up the caterwauling the minute the back door closes on Cam and JD for everyone to just throw up their hands and admit JD's the only one who can get him to hush up. Cindy's eyes are like two bruises in her face, dark and shadowed, but she doesn't begrudge an inch of it. "At least someone can," she says, and reaches across the table to squeeze JD's hand. "Thank you for taking care of him."

"My pleasure," JD says. He doesn't quite mean it -- Cam knows what sort of memories this must be stirring for him, but neither one of them have said anything about it. But Cindy doesn't see otherwise, although Cam thinks Momma might. 

Not the first time one of the family babies has bonded so quick and hard with someone else -- Mary Beth was born to Sandra and David at about the same time Danielle was born to Stephen and Suzanne, and six months in, everyone involved threw up their hands and just swapped kids; it happens sometimes. JD's tolerant. After a few days of working on the kitchen table, in the middle of utter chaos, he just straps AJ into the carry-sling, and after that point it's common for Cam to see JD sitting in their makeshift office, carefully typing around the baby sleeping against his heart.

The one good thing about all of this, Cam realizes, as September shades to October and the weather starts turning colder, is that nobody's said a word in weeks to even hint that JD might not be family.

He misses their house (the peace, the quiet, his own kitchen, not having to worry about whether he's decent when he wakes up to pee in the middle of the night -- not that anyone in the family is body-shy, not really, but there's _propriety_ to think of, and JD is never shirtless where anyone else might see his ink and Cam misses that too) but he's glad they're here; they're needed. Momma's got her hands full, and she's glad for the help in the kitchen and gladder still for the help with the kids. Daddy tries, but he's hopeless with anyone under the age of reason, although he's taken Chandler and Stewart under his wing; Chandler's old enough to be trusted with basic tools, and he's been handed some sandpaper and apprenticed to Uncle Bayliss to keep him out of trouble after school. 

Cam wipes noses and bandages scrapes and listens to Sarajane (Carter's daughter, six years old and already breaking hearts) tell him about all the boys she's going to marry someday (she's up to five by now). He helps Chandler with his spelling and makes sure Stewart is doing his math homework (kid's in the gifted program, skipped two grades, even up with his brother now, and is _still_ bored out of his mind; he's perfectly _capable_ of doing all the math he's assigned, he just doesn't _want_ to). After a few weeks of arguments over whether or not the math homework is going to get done, Cam finally sends Momma down to the basement for his old textbooks -- Momma never throws anything out -- and starts Stewart in on pre-algebra. Kid takes to it like a duck to water, and by Halloween he's the youngest seven-year-old Cam's ever met who can solve a basic quadratic equation.

"It's not _natural_ ," Cam complains to JD, late one night when they're both sprawled across the bed and worn straight through to the bone. "I swear that kid thinks in abstract algebra."

JD just pats him on the shoulder. "It's good for you both," he says, kindly. "Give him another two years and we'll hire him."

"Pretty sure the child labor laws won't let us enslave him until he's at least fourteen," Cam mumbles, and -- just as he's starting to think that it's been a long damn time since he's had his hands on JD's naked skin -- falls asleep.

Cam feels like he's doing three jobs -- riding herd on the herd, helping Momma tend the house as much as he's able, and trying to squeeze in as much hack time as humanly possible. He's developing a tardy appreciation for Momma -- she always made it look so goddamn _easy_. Miranda does what she can, which mostly involves the kids, and Cindy's flipping back and forth between sleeping sixteen hours a day (which everyone's worried about and nobody's talking about) and descending on the house in a whirlwind of activity to set it to rights. 

Cam picks up as much of the slack as he can without falling over; it helps that the family children have been raised knowing that there are some things Daddy just can't do, and they widen that umbrella to include him, too. It helps that the house is built with a cripple in mind, that you can't go too far without finding a chair or a stool sitting and waiting for someone to sit suddenly down on and everybody's careful to keep toys and clothes off the floor. Even the kittens stay out from underfoot, which is partially because they actually (shockingly enough) have manners and partially because Cam accidentally set the cane down on Squeaker's tail once.

He's happy enough. With his family, being useful, being capable, being loved. Through it all, though, there's a constant simmering awareness, down where Cam only lets himself see when he's ready for it: JD is constructing himself an alternate identity that will let him walk into Ba'al's fortress, under his own power this time, and they both know there's a chance he won't be walking back out.

They don't talk about it. For all that's not being said, JD could just be working on raising a baby with half his attention and fulfilling a contract with the other half. Cam's the only one who overhears JD on the (shielded, secured) phone line they've run out to the office, talking with Sam -- mostly listening, a few scattered _uh-huh_ and _yeah_ s tossed in for good measure. Cam's the only one who notices that JD's up to running fifteen miles a day now, that JD disappears into the basement (where they keep the weight machine) and comes back sweaty. 

Cam's not the only one who knows that JD's talked Carter into bringing him into the police firing range on Tuesday and Thursday nights, but he's the only one -- other than Carter -- who knows that it's not just a desire to learn how to shoot. Carter catches Cam alone in the kitchen after one of those sessions, looking serious and concerned. "He's not --" Carter starts, and Cam sighs.

"Yeah, I know," Cam says. 

Carter studies his face for a few minutes. "He asked me not to say anything to anybody," he finally says. "And I can do that. But I need to know if you know why."

"Why he doesn't want anyone to know?" Cam asks. "Or why he knows what he's doing?"

"Both." Carter leans against the counter, folds his arms across his chest. "Is there something we need to be worried about?"

Cam shakes his head and sighs. "No," he says. And God help him, because he hates lying to his family.

But it's the kind of ticking time-bomb you can't disarm just by wishing it gone. JD disappears into town Wednesday nights and Saturday afternoons, and Cam knows he's taking lessons in the dojo; JD talks happily and freely about his classes, passes them off as wanting to keep in shape. He's teaching Ricky what he knows, even, down in the basement- _cum_ -home-gym, and he's always scrupulously careful to avoid either of them coming back upstairs with bruises. 

Cam's the only one who knows that JD is taking _judo_ , not _tai chi_ ; Cam's the only one who knows that O'Neill is rated _sandan_ , third-degree black belt, perfectly qualified to teach. JD has the skills and the knowledge, but not the official ranking, and -- he says -- he doesn't know this body well enough to be comfortable taking it into potential combat without _getting_ to know it better. 

He'd thought JD was in supreme physical condition when they'd met. Now he knows JD considered it nothing more than merely adequate, because he's seeing what JD considers "acceptable"; he watches as JD, already whipcord-thin, turns himself into bone and muscle and callus. Momma watches, too. She doesn't say a word, but Cam can see the blocks sliding around behind her eyes as she pushes another helping of potatoes onto JD at dinner and JD wolfs them down; he's hungrier now than he ever has been, all his calories going to muscle and fuel. 

At night, he holds JD, and thinks: if it hadn't been for eight hours in his life, he'd be right there at JD's side, running and shooting and training alongside him. It doesn't make it any easier to know that if it hadn't been for eight hours in his life, he wouldn't have JD there to hold at all.

"You sure you don't have anyone you want to invite for Thanksgiving, JD, honey?" Momma asks, one Friday night when she's sitting at the kitchen table making lists and building headcounts, and that careless "honey" takes Cam's breath away. 

JD's doing the dishes. "No, ma'am," he says, his voice soft, and Cam thinks he hears something there, underneath the casual offhandedness. "All my family's right here already."

Not true -- or rather, partially true; JD's family is right here, but O'Neill's family is scattered to the winds. But Momma only nods. She's been told the cover story, and JD and Cam are both excellent at deflecting questions that could poke holes in it. But later that night, Momma sits Cam down in the living room with a hank of laceweight alpaca and instructions to hold his hands still, and the first words out of her mouth, after ten minutes of patient winding, are, "You wanna tell me what war he's gearing up to fight?"

If Cam drops the yarn, he'll be the one who has to untangle it. Momma's good at getting him pinned down when she needs to. "Momma," he says: wordless plea. _Don't make me have this conversation with you._

"Don't you 'Momma' me, young man," she warns. "What trouble are you boys in?"

"I can't tell you," he says. "I really can't. Please, Momma, don't make me."

"You hush," she says. "Now, I've sat here and I've kept my peace for nearly a year now, and I've watched the two of you and I've thought things and changed my mind a hundred times. I've watched him take care of you, and I've watched him stand up with us, and I haven't said a word, because it's clear that whatever he's been through, whatever brought him here to us, he was raised up right. And you know your father thinks he's going to break your heart, and me, I haven't made up my mind on that one way or the other yet. But any damn fool can see that you two are into something big, and he's sure there's a chance that whatever it is, he's going to need to do something about it. And I need to know what kind of trouble is going to come calling at my door."

"It won't," comes the voice from the doorway, and Cam looks up to see JD standing there, AJ strapped in against his chest and the dish-towel from kitchen cleanup still tucked into the waistband of his jeans. He's wearing his O'Neill seeming again, something about the way he cocks his head or holds his shoulders that makes Cam painfully aware of all the decades of knowledge locked inside his lover's head. "I won't let it."

Momma harrumphs. She's surprised to see JD standing there, Cam thinks; JD is always careful to make noise when he moves around the house, and he shouldn't have been able to do his ghost-foot impression while wearing a baby that everyone in the house has picked up JD's nickname of "the Mouth" for. But her chin just comes up, and she stares him down with a look that Cam learned to fear as far back as he remembers. "Could be you won't have any choice in the matter."

"Yes," JD says. "I can, and I will. And he's not lying to you. He can't tell you. Don't ask him to."

It's like a sudden cloud passes over the sun. "Don't tell me what to do in my own home," Momma says.

Cam's daddy and JD have arrived at a truce, mostly brokered by both of them having agreed -- without anything so crass as words -- that what transpired last Christmas will never be spoken of again. They give each other a wide berth, and Cam knows JD's decided to let actions speak louder than words and give Daddy plenty of space and time to come around. Momma doesn't hold with giving things time. Momma doesn't hold with being spoken to like that, either.

"No, ma'am," JD says. "I'm not. But I love him. And I know you do, too. I'm asking you not to make his burden any harder to carry than it already is."

It's the only argument that would have a hope in hell of reaching Momma, and Cam's a little surprised -- though not at all startled, really -- to realize that JD knows it. "Don't fight," he says, and oh, that's his voice cracking, damn it; he'd promised himself he wasn't going to let this get to him. "Please, both of you. Don't fight."

"We're not fighting," JD says. His eyes are dark in his face; he's holding AJ not just because AJ screams his damn fool head off if JD leaves the room, Cam thinks. He's holding AJ because it makes him more harmless. "I'm not lying to you, ma'am, and I'm not going to. I can't tell you what's going on, and neither can he. All I can say is that your son's a good man, and he doesn't let a little thing like being disabled stand in the way of duty. And both of us have skills and knowledge that nobody can afford to waste." 

Momma raises an eyebrow. She's cooling down from that first spike of temper. "Boy your age has no right saying something like that."

"No," JD says. "But I did. And that's all I can give you." He turns to go, turns back. "Except to say that there is absolutely no chance on Earth that this will come back on you. A lot of very powerful people will make damn sure of that."

Momma watches him go, her lips pursed. Cam's head is throbbing. He knows better than anyone in this house -- or better than anyone in this house but one -- how little the qualifier "on Earth" really means. "You expect me to be satisfied with that?" Momma says. It's not quite a question.

"No," Cam says. "But it's more than it's safe for you to know."

"Don't you give me that," Momma says, sharp and biting. "Don't you -- I watched you, Cameron, I watched you climb out of that bed on nothing more than guts and stubbornness and learn to walk again, and I kept my mouth shut and I didn't say a damn word about that bunch of lies they fed me about how you wound up in that bed in the first place. And I watched you looking like you'd never laugh again and I watched you fading away to nothing and I watched you climb back out of that pit and now you're talking like you're --"

Her voice breaks, and Cam's heart breaks with it. "And I buried my baby boy and I will _not_ bury you too."

"Momma," Cam says. "Momma." He puts down the yarn -- tangles be damned; he'll be careful -- and wraps his arms around her. "It's all right, Momma, it's all right," he says, because there's nothing else he can say. "I'm not going anywhere. I'm not. It's all right."

It takes a long minute before she draws back and sniffles. She lifts the neck of her shirt to blot away the tears. "Don't you lie to me," she says. "If it were all right, you wouldn't be so damn worried."

Sometimes, Cam hates living with a family full of perceptive people. "It's as all right as I can make it," he says, and it'll have to be enough.

They get back the first prototype casting from the factory -- three different logic boards for testing and burn-in, and all three of them crash and burn spectacularly. It pisses Cam off to no end -- he's in charge of the circuitry for this project; JD's writing the software. Cam had been the one to argue against using off-the-shelf GPS receivers -- not the kind you'd find on the shelves at Best Buy, the kind that the military has designed to interface with PPS, the second level of the GPS system that's only available to the military, but still. Cam didn't think that anything off-the-shelf would be flexible enough to meet their needs. He's cursing that conviction now.

They're trying to develop a handheld positioning device that can navigate, map, and retain position without having to rely on satellite uplink more than once a day or so, something that can retain a memory of where it's been and what direction it's going and build and trace a map that reflects actual terrain instead of whatever the unit's stored. Cam can sympathize with the desire -- he's gotten stuck somewhere more than once when the car's GPS-receiver was relying on an outdated map to get him somewhere and he was stuck with the cheerful woman's voice telling him to make a left turn onto a road that just plain wasn't _there_. 

The contract, Cam thinks, is for ops that are running covert and can't risk any kind of transmission, and he can sympathize with that, too. But it's a frustrating process, and one that isn't going well. "We are out of our fucking depth here," he says -- all right, snarls -- when the third prototype gives up its little electronic guts in a puff of smoke and a really bad smell. 

JD doesn't look up. "Wasn't expecting it to work the first time," he says. "Contract's got a two-year due-date. We've got time. We'll get it."

It pisses Cam off -- he's beyond high-strung at the moment, and he recognizes the anger at JD's equanimity as something that'll blow any second if he lets it. So he doesn't let it. "Taking a break," he says, and gets the hell out of the office before he can say something he shouldn't.

Their office is in the outbuilding that used to be a barn -- way back in the deepest recesses of history, when this was a working farm instead of a lot of land lying fallow with a hobby garden and a single overgrown orchard. The bulk of the barn is Daddy and Uncle Bayliss's workshop -- they're both master carpenters, though Daddy's limited to the small pieces. Cam stomps into the workshop proper, not outside; they're in a cold snap, and he's not that annoyed.

Uncle Bayliss is planing boards; Daddy's settled at the shipping bench, crating up jewelry boxes for the UPS pickup. Their mail-order business had started out as a hobby; these days, they can't fill the orders anywhere near as fast as they're coming in, and Cam knows they're up to a six-month waiting period. Daddy looks up as Cam thumps over to the other side of the bench and settles himself a little more firmly than he should. "Trouble?" he asks.

"Bad day," Cam says. "Nothing's working."

It gets him a look-over. Daddy's just as perceptive as Momma is, but he's quieter about it; all he says is, "Got some pieces that need staining. Could be working on something else might clear your head a bit."

Cam rubs his hands over his face. "Yeah," he says. "Yeah. All right."

His daddy's right, and the craft work does clear his head a bit -- or at least, the satisfaction of working with his hands reassures him that he's not a complete failure, which is something he'd never say out loud but he's pretty sure everyone, or at least JD, can read. Sometimes Cam hates being an open book. But he takes the afternoon off, stains jewelry boxes and helps Uncle Bayliss fit a replacement leg for the cedar chest Mrs. Miller from church dropped off last week -- locals always get bumped far up on the priority list -- and that night he goes back to the office and draws up the diagrams for revisions four, five, and six.

The whole thing is like waiting for the other shoe to drop. He doesn't ask JD how his plans are going -- there's a part of him that doesn't want to know, and a part of him that wants to know everything; he'll balance it out by letting JD decide what to tell him and when, because he's pretty sure, by now, that JD has a good sense of what he needs to know. Or at least, he's pretty sure that JD knows that keeping him in the dark forever is not an option. 

By Thanksgiving, though, he's about ready to jump out of his _skin_ , and hearing that Sam's promised Momma she's going to make it this year, come hell or high water, doesn't do much to ease his mind. Especially not when Cam hears that she's bringing someone along with her -- which has always been her right; Sam's family just as much as someone who was born a Mitchell, and when you're cooking for sixty, one or two more doesn't make much difference. JD gets very, very quiet when he hears, though. 

It isn't until afterwards, when they're settled back in the office, that JD tells Cam why hearing the name "Murray" made him turn pale and quiet. "Murray's the name Teal'c uses," he says. "On Earth. I just don't know why --"

Why Sam would bring him, why he would want to come, what they've got planned. Because he doesn't think Sam would bring one of O'Neill's old team for a visit unless there was a damn good reason; Sam's not that cruel. There has to be a reason.

Sam shows up with Spence in tow -- they met up at the airport -- and trailing a guy who's big as a house and wearing a knit cap tugged down around his eyebrows. Cam never met Teal'c, and JD's never talked about him, but the minute Cam lays eyes on him, he knows what that reason was: O'Neill considers Teal'c his second-in-command, probably always will, and he's sent Teal'c to get the lay of the land. He watches Teal'c (can't bring himself to think of the guy as "Murray") watching everything and everybody, quiet and patient and unfailingly polite, and doesn't go looking for JD, who disappeared into the office the minute he heard the arrival. 

JD doesn't come out until well after the ceremonial Wednesday night pizza delivery, which Momma notes (and gets squinchy-eyed about) but doesn't comment on. Cam's putting the finishing touches on the pies; Teal'c offered to help when Sam did, and Cam's been watching him while he's been watching Cam the whole time. Sam's easy with the guy, which gives him a huge check mark in the "plus" column, and he passed the Momma test with flying colors. 

Of course, Momma thinks he's a scientist on loan to Sam's lab from a university in South Africa (explains the facial tattoo and the slightly stilted English; it has the sense of a cover story that's been trotted out so many times it's well-polished by now). Still, the guy's got a sort of serenity that manages to make even the kitchen on Thanksgiving Eve a tranquil place, and the kids _adore_ him. 

JD's face is composed as he lets himself in the back door, and Cam thinks he might be the only one who can see the sudden electricity crackling through the room. Or maybe not the only one; Sam leaps into the verbal fray quickly, before anyone can say anything they shouldn't. "JD. This is Murray; he's a friend of mine from work. Murray, this is Cam's partner JD."

Teal'c inclines his head. "I am pleased to meet you," he says, with the same quiet gravitas he's carried all evening. "Samantha Carter has told me much of your skills."

JD's eyes flick around the room -- taking stock of who's there and who'll overhear, Cam thinks. Cam can see him taking a deep breath, squaring his shoulders. "Welcome to the madhouse," he says, shortly, and brings his hand up to rest against AJ's back. The baby's fussing, but he quiets down at JD's touch. "Anyone seen Cindy? Baby's hungry."

"Upstairs," Cam says, and watches Teal'c watching JD go.

The undercurrents are enough to drown in. He gets Sam pulled aside at the first chance he gets. "You sure this was a good idea?" he asks her. 

She pulls an unhappy face. "I know," she says. "Bad enough he has to deal with me. But I don't think Ja -- the General trusts me to be able to make the call."

Cam frowns. "What call?"

"About whether or not JD's going to be able to handle himself deep under." She sighs. "And he's right. And he won't be able to be rational about it, either." She rubs her eyes. "God, Cam, I've never seen him so torn up about a decision. And we'd drop the plan entirely, but --"

"That bad, huh?" Cam doesn't want to hear this, doesn't want to _think_ this, because if O'Neill's sending out his 2IC to assess JD's fitness, it must mean that they're close. 

"That bad," Sam says, plainly. "Farrow-Marshall just filed for a series of patents that -- well, they don't come from here, let's just say. And there's talk among those who know that -- Balim -- is thinking about making a bid for political office."

Cam chokes. Yeah, that's _really_ not good news. "Fuck," he says. It's about all he can muster.

"Yes," Sam agrees. "And you don't want to know where his funding's coming from. And we can't just send someone in to take Balim into custody -- or worse -- because of what happened with Coulson. It'd blow. There are enough leaks around the program that we really don't have more than a few years of grace left, and after that --" She shakes her head. "I don't want to think about it."

The sensation of putting things together all at once, Cam's often thought, is much like the sensation of getting hit between the eyes with a two-by-four. "That's why O'Neill's worried," he says.

Sam looks startled. "What is?"

"I'll lay you money," Cam says. "I'll lay you money that the only reason O'Neill's in Washington right now is because he knows the program's going public sooner instead of later, and he wants to be there controlling the fallout when it does."

It makes sense. It makes a hell of a lot of sense -- he's been trying to figure out what motive O'Neill could _possibly_ have had in accepting the position, because from what he knows of JD, he knows that Washington would be their idea of the special hell. And O'Neill had seemed quiet and tired and a little bit on his way to miserable, and Cam knows -- _knows_ \-- that the ability to do a necessary but unpleasant task is something JD brought with him from his point of genesis and not something he picked up after.

"I --" Sam starts, and then closes her mouth again. "You might be right. I just don't know. He doesn't tell me what he's thinking."

There's a little bit of frustration and hurt underneath her even tone, and Cam knows why it's there. She served with Jack O'Neill for nigh on ten years. He met the man once, for less than twenty minutes. She's done something inside her head to reconcile the existence of JD with her knowledge of O'Neill, something that lets her embrace or ignore the fact that Cam's lover is the man she's been carrying a torch for for years. But the fact that JD confides in Cam, enough that Cam thinks he can read O'Neill's motivations, is something she doesn't want to face.

He tucks his cane between his knees and puts his arms around her. She holds back for a second, but when he hangs on, she finally sighs and softens. "I'm just so _tired_ ," she says, and in that sentence, Cam can hear all the years she's been fighting on the front lines and all the dreams and ideals she saw fade in the cold light of political reality.

"Come stay out here for a while," he says. He'd been planning on making her the offer -- plea, really; there's no way in hell he can keep going with the R&D on the contract single-handed, not with the added hassles of helping Momma keep house. "Could use your help with the work we're doing. And you could use some time letting Momma fuss over you. And Cindy could use a friend." Cindy's got family, but sometimes a friend can do what family can't, and she and Sam had bonded quick and fast, early on; Sam might be the person who can help pull her out of her haze.

Sam holds on for a second longer, then draws back and makes herself smile. "I'm busy," she says. "It's important."

"We've got an office," Cam counters. "Can't take classified stuff off-base, but I'll bet that you've got more'n a couple weeks of non-classified stuff to get done, stuff you've been putting off. And you haven't taken leave in longer than a month of Sundays, if I know you. And I do. Know you. You won't do anyone any good if you work yourself into the ground."

"We'll see," she says, and it has the sound of finality in it. Cam doesn't push. "We'll see" from Sam is a no more often than it's a yes, but he isn't out of arguments yet.

The sound of a door slamming down the hall reminds them both that they're in the middle of the house on the eve of Thanksgiving, and this isn't the time or the place for a detailed discussion. Cam backs off. "Think about it," is all he says, and heads back into the kitchen.

Teal'c is missing, though, and Peggy gestures to the back porch with her chin: Cam can just see the edge of JD's shoulder through the door, which is open to the screen to let off some of the heat of both ovens going full bore. He's gesticulating, wildly. Cam steps over to see if he needs to step in, and stops when he hears JD's voice, so low it wouldn't carry past the screen door. "--want to," he's saying. "And if he made you think I do, he's projecting. If you want to tell me there's no problem and you don't need me, I'm all for it."

Teal'c's voice, in return, is just as quiet. "I would like nothing better than to say that very thing, and I cannot. O'Neill has called me back to provide him with assistance, and I came willingly. Like him, you believe this to be a problem worthy of your attention. And yet I cannot believe your stated reasons are your only reasons."

"Dammit, T." JD's voice is a bleeding wound. "Don't make me do this."

Cam can't see Teal'c -- can't even see JD; they're at the wrong angle, over in the corner of the porch where the knitting circle would be if it wasn't so damn cold out this week. But he can hear both sympathy and inevitability in Teal'c's voice. "You know I must. I cannot trust your abilities if I am unsure of your motivations."

"God damn it," JD says, and Cam almost steps forward, almost opens the door and goes to hold him and soothe him and tell him it's going to be all right. Then JD is speaking again. "I miss you, all right? I miss all of you so much it feels like there's nothing left of me sometimes. I miss being useful. I miss knowing I'm doing what needs to be done, and I miss being the guy who's on the scene and calling the shots. I won't say I miss knowing I'm the only one who can take the blame, but -- you know, you _know_ , how much it hurts to step back and let it fall on someone else's head. You know how bad I am at that."

A moment's pause. "I know," Teal'c says. "I did not ever believe I would hear you say so this plainly."

JD laughs. It's an ugly, strained sound. "Lotta things I'm saying now that I never said before. But that's not the reason I'm doing this. It's not ego-gratification, and it's not for revenge, and it's not because I want some route in to my old life. I know that's what it looks like. I know that's what _he_ probably thinks it is, and I know that's why he sent you here. And I know he sees me with Mitchell and he can't even _think_ straight -- I know exactly how much that hurts him, and I know why, and I'm _sorry_ and I wish it didn't have to go down like that. But that's _why_ I can't just let this go."

Cam can hear the creak of wood, and his mind has no problems filling in JD dropping into one of the rocking chairs and burying his face in his hands; his voice turns muffled. "I could walk away when it wasn't personal," he says. "I could lie to myself and tell myself that the country could take care of itself and that you guys had it covered and I could just step back and relax. But this -- if we're right, this threatens everyone. And I can't stand back and watch my family in danger without doing something about it. Because _that's_ something I couldn't live with myself, knowing."

Another of those long pauses, and Cam would give a great deal to know what's passing unspoken between the two of them right now. "You are both more and less like O'Neill than I had thought you would be," Teal'c finally says.

JD laughs again. "Yeah," he says. "Fucking tell me about it." A pause, and then he says, "I learned to stop thinking of you guys as my family. I made myself stop thinking of you guys as my family. Tell him that. Tell him I've got no claim on his life anymore. I -- I want him to know that, and I couldn't say it to his face. He doesn't have to worry about me."

"I will," Teal'c says. "And though he would deny it if accused, I believe he is grateful." 

Cam's just turning around -- he doesn't want them to know he was here, and it sounds like the conversation's winding down; JD usually knows when he's being eavesdropped upon and alters his behavior accordingly, but there's too much raw and open honesty there for Cam to believe it this time -- when JD adds, "If you can, tell Daniel I miss him."

Cam doesn't wait to hear what Teal'c's response might be. Doesn't wait to hear anything else. It's not pain and it's not comfort and it's not a whole lot of things; it's just proof once again that eavesdroppers rarely hear things they want to hear. He backs up from the door, not putting cane to floor lest the sound of his passage be noted, and makes his way through the (crowded, noisy, bustling, _real_ ) kitchen without meeting anyone's eye. He takes himself through the kitchen, down the hallway, around the corner into the new wing, into the bedroom he and JD have been living out of for the past three months. The bedroom JD left their house and their home to move into, to tend a family that still views him with suspicion even if they've started to welcome him as kin, all because the two of them were needed and Cam wouldn't have been able to live with himself if they hadn't gone.

It's dark in here, and quiet. Cam sits on the edge of the bed and rubs the curve of his hip, right where the cold weather has settled into his bones and left him aching. If there'd been any doubt in his mind that what he feels for JD is love, it's gone now. If it weren't love, his chest wouldn't feel so tight.


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> How you go undercover in someone else's life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Originally [posted](https://synecdochic.dreamwidth.org/169696.html) 2007-12-01.)

## 

ten

Three days before Christmas Eve, Cam has planted himself at the chair-height section of the kitchen counter, rolling out the dough for the blueberry tartlets -- since he's in residence for Christmas this year, instead of fixing to be exhausted from travel, he's got the time to fuss with some of the more delicate desserts, the kind he hasn't gotten a chance to contribute for a while. It's surprisingly soothing, to build the layers and layers of pastry crust; after a few of them, he's nearly reached a Zen-like trance, shutting out the chaos and confusion of the House During Christmas Week until it barely reaches his ears.

Of course, the iPod helps with that, too. He and JD really should have bought another one -- with a larger hard drive -- by now, but it's more fun to bitch at each other for replacing the contents; he managed to steal it out of JD's sock drawer and switch it over this morning, and he's got Zeppelin cranked up so high that he can't hear anything but _the Queen of Light took her bow and then she turned to go; the Prince of Peace embraced the gloom and walked the night alone_. He's just gotten up to singing along with _waiting for the angels of Avalon, waiting for the eastern glow_ when two hands lift the earbuds out of his ears.

"Herd of thundering elephants could sneak up on you," JD says, mildly. 

Cam tips his head back to squint up at JD, who's got his elbows planted right in the knots in Cam's shoulders and is leaning on them. Feels good; he's achey today, from the cold, from the weather, from all the baby-wrangling duties he can't help but keep contributing to even when he knows he shouldn't. "The herd of thundering elephants don't get out of school until three," he says. 

From the baby sling against JD's chest, AJ -- who makes enough noise to be considered a herd of thundering elephants all by his lonesome -- bangs his baby fist against Cam's head. JD reaches out to capture AJ's hand before Cam can tell if he's drumming in time with Bonham or not. "Still," JD says. "Bad idea to drown out the background."

There's nothing in JD's voice that even hints at censure. It's just a statement, like any statement JD makes. But Cam takes the meaning anyway, sudden and sharp. Cam's never been ground forces, never had any experience with being somewhere where his awareness of the surrounding area could make the difference between life and death (his or others'). JD is telling him without actually telling him that it's time to start thinking that way.

Cam reaches down and shuts off the iPod; he leaves flour smudges on the click wheel, and the tinny noise from the earbuds cuts off. "Yeah, okay," he says. There's an argument waiting there, lurking underneath the muddy waters, but he doesn't feel like having it now; it's going to be one of the ones where they shout at each other for a good hour or two, and now isn't the time or the place for it. It's going to be the one (on the surface) about how they've promised each other that what they're doing isn't going to come crashing into their lives here, about how there's no need for him to be on edge and jumping at shadows in his momma's own kitchen, and -- deeper down, in the parts where Cam wouldn't admit it out loud even if you put hot pokers to his feet -- the one about how bitter he is that he isn't going to be able to go follow JD even if (even though) he wants to.

They've been having that one a lot lately. Hard to feel like you're a valuable and useful member of a team when the most you're preparing for is to sit in the kitchen and make blueberry tarts.

"Pair of hands," JD says, and holds his up. "What do you need me to do?"

Freed of JD's restraint, AJ grabs a handful of Cam's hair. Cam winces. "Keep the baby out of my hair," he says. "Literally. Other'n that, I'm good." 

He could actually use a few things from the pantry, but he's not directly at the point of needing them yet, and when he gets there, he's pretty sure he's going to haul his sorry carcass out of the chair and get them himself, instead of asking JD for them. And he's pretty sure that JD will let him, because he knows that JD knows how fucking _helpless_ he's feeling. They haven't actually had that particular fight yet, and Cam thinks they're not going to, because JD won't let them. JD's just been -- quietly and without fanfare -- letting Cam push himself as far as he can go, instead of jumping in to ease the way. 

And a year ago, Cam would have fussed to beat the band about it. A year ago, Cam would have called JD names, stormed and raged and accused, called it manipulation and ostentation and worse. Now, he recognizes it for what it is. The tough part of loving someone, Momma always used to say, is giving them what they _need_ , not what you want to give them; doing things the way they need them done, not the way you want to do them. Cam knows JD well enough by now to know that for him, watching Cam struggle is a torment, because the way JD shows love is to _do_. But right now, the last thing Cam needs is to be done _for_ , and JD -- now -- knows that. 

So he changes his mind, and says, "Actually, I could use another cup of coffee," and a little bit of the tension around JD's eyes eases. 

"I'll make a new pot," JD says. "This one looks like it's been sitting all afternoon." 

Cam laughs. "Yeah, well. So've I." 

He watches as JD makes himself busy with coffee beans, filter. Something in the way JD's moving, something in the way JD isn't quite meeting his eyes but at the same time isn't looking away, something in the way JD is holding his shoulders or his head or even just the way JD is being more solicitous than usual, makes Cam add things up.

"You've got your plan, don't you," he says. 

JD's shoulders tense. His hand comes up automatically to cradle the back of AJ's head, the same gesture Cam's seen a thousand times before. Right now, though, it takes on a new meaning, one Cam thinks might be _I'm leaving, but I'm not leaving you._ "Yeah," he says. "I'm ready."

_I_. Not _we_. Cam fights the urge to close his eyes, fights the nausea that's starting to rise from the pit of his stomach. He knew this was coming. He's been ready for it. Doesn't change the fact that hearing it hurts like hell. 

"Okay," he says. He sets down the pastry-cutter; he's too stirred up for such delicate work, and the world won't end if the tarts are a few hours late. He can hear his own voice; it's calmer than he thought it would be. "Okay. Tell me what you need me to do. Tell me what part you need me to play."

He's expecting instructions, or a demurral until later -- the kitchen's empty right now, but that could change any second, especially once the kids get home from school -- or even a fight about how much JD's going to tell him and how much JD's going to hold back. He's already been bracing himself for the fact that JD doesn't want him to know what's going on, and getting any information out of him is going to be like pulling teeth. He's not ready for what JD does, which is drop the basket for the coffeemaker on the counter with a sharp _clack_ like his hand just wouldn't hold it anymore and cross over to where Cam's sitting with two quick steps.

JD puts both of his hands on the side of Cam's cheeks, cradling his face, the tips of his fingers curling around the back of Cam's head and biting into his scalp. "I love you," JD says. Fiercely, elementally, like his words alone could save the world. "I love you so fucking much."

It renders Cam down, renders him up. It isn't that JD never says it. He does. More, now, than he did when they started; more often, more-frequently unprompted, more in the light of day and more-increasingly either with an audience or without. But the sound in JD's voice now is harsh and emphatic and uncompromising, bedrock-firm and bedrock-stable. It's the kind of sound you can build on, the kind of sound you cradle close and hold for all the nights when your bed will be cold and lonely.

It makes the backs of Cam's eyeballs itch, like he's feeling so much, so deeply, he can't even find the tears he knows are lurking there somewhere. "Love you too," he says, covering his reaction with briskness. AJ reaches out his tiny chubby baby hand and touches Cam's chin. Cam blinks a few times; the kitchen's going swimmy. "But that wasn't an answer."

"I _know_ , dammit." JD exhales out, one brisk and tortured sigh, and bends so that his forehead's touching Cam's. "You're not going to like it."

"Yeah," Cam says. "Yeah. I kinda got that impression already."

When they finally do get around to being able to talk about it -- later that night, after all the kids have gone to sleep and all the adults have started to follow, once the house is shut up and settled down and they're in bed with a kitten trying to climb under the covers between them, once the lights are out and JD can strip down and settle himself along Cam's back and speak into his hair instead of having to meet his eyes -- Cam realizes JD was right. He doesn't like it. At all.

"You're saying that you don't trust me," he says. Flatly; he's trying to keep his temper. Won't do anyone any good for this to degenerate into a shouting match, and if they wake up the rest of the house there'll be hell to pay. It's why, he thinks, JD saved it until now, instead of taking them out to the office in the barn and letting them shout themselves stupid. They'll have to watch their tempers, here. "You're saying that you don't think I can be a part of this without fucking it up for you."

"No," JD says. Firm and quick and emphatic, a denial that's completely instinctive and (Cam thinks) completely wholehearted. "No. That's not it. Not at all. I'd trust you with anything. With everything. But I don't want you to worry any more than you already will."

"Worry more if I don't know what's going on," Cam says. "Worry more if I have to imagine the worst-case scenario for the entire time you'll be --"

_Gone_ , he starts to say, and then it all catches up with him all at once. He's sending JD off to _Ba'al_. The man -- _Goa'uld_ \-- who tortured and killed Jack O'Neill, over and over and over again, for nothing more than a piece of information that Jack O'Neill didn't even _have_. The one Goa'uld out of all of them, according to JD, who actually displayed any sign of adaptability, of intelligence. 

He's sending his lover straight into the snake's den, and JD might not ever be coming back.

The realization washes over him, and for a minute it's like he's standing outside his own body, looking down at himself -- curling up into a ball, his wrists and elbows and knees all shaking, his heart racing and his chest thick and tight like bricks are pressing down on it. He tries to breathe, keep breathing, since that's the only thing he knows how to do. It's not physical pain. He knows how to handle physical pain by now; it's a lover as intimate as JD is to him, companion and mistress and bane and constant irritant. But this is something that isn't physical at all, and it hurts so much he wants to scream.

JD is speaking. It takes a minute for the words to make their way through Cam's awareness. "-- know how to _do_ this," JD is saying. "I don't know how to _handle_ this. I've never been here before. There's never been anyone --"

Cam takes a deep breath; it feels like trying to get your lungs back after you've been thrown off a horse and had the air knocked clean out of you. It catches on the inhale, and he tightens his chest and his throat. He will not let it turn into a sob. He tries to remember everything they've learned about how to fight clean, everything they've figured out about each other's sore spots and trigger-points and places they can't ever go unless they really mean it. He won't let this turn into something ugly. "I need to know," he says. "You want to -- to protect me. To keep me safe. To keep me out of it. That won't work. I need to know what you're doing and where you're going and what your plan is. I need to know I'm doing everything I possibly can to help, and I need to know what I'm sending you into."

Cam thinks JD might be controlling himself as much as he is. So, neither of them want this to turn ugly. That's going to help. They've spent a year and a half learning each other in and out, and it might not have been long enough, but it's what they've got to work with and it'll have to do. For a second, Cam thinks that everything they've done and been to each other so far, every moment they've spent learning how to love each other, might have been leading them to this bed and this conversation and this set of choices.

"I was in Poland," JD says, and to anyone else it might sound like a non-sequitur, but Cam hears it as a beginning. "I was in East Berlin. I spent years behind those lines. Doing things nobody should ever have to do, and the whole damn time, I knew it was for -- something bigger than me. Something important. And I got through it. Because I had Sara waiting for me on the other side, and she was -- untouched. Separate." 

Each word sounds like it's being torn out of JD's chest, like he's reaching into his heart and pulling out pieces of the shattered whole that have been held together for years by nothing more than force of will. "I had to have her there," JD is saying, and Cam _understands_. He does. He's never done anything like what JD -- like what _O'Neill_ \-- did; he knows that, even if he doesn't know the exact details of what O'Neill did, even if he knows that some of the stains on JD's soul, some of the stories inked under his skin, are black enough that no amount of light can ever blow the shadows out of the corners. 

But he can remember what it was like to be away at war and know that he had his family, had something waiting for him, something that was clean and pure and wholesome. He remembers the way it used to lift him up over the dark times, and he remembers what coming home used to be: setting it all aside, walking from one world to the next, drawing strength from the knowledge that his own sins would, could, be washed away in the fact that someone, somewhere, believed the best of him. He remembers what it was like to feel like he was lost, drowning, not even knowing himself anymore, and only being able to find his way back through by looking at who he was, reflected in someone else's eyes. Someone who didn't know what he was, what he'd done.

Cam's family is a military family, full of military wives, military husbands, military sons and daughters and mothers and fathers. The Mitchells are divided into those who go and those who stay, and those who stay know every single one of the unspoken, unwritten rules about what they need to do, what they need to be, for those who go. Cam grew up watching his momma's face every time the phone rang, watching his momma welcome his daddy home with open arms and never asking any questions.

Cam isn't his momma. And he will not be a military husband. Not when he remembers being able to be the one who answered the call.

"No," he says. Not loudly, but _firmly_ , what Momma always called his digging-in-his-heels tone of voice. JD knows it too. Cam can feel JD's hand tighten, where it's lying on Cam's hip, and he hears JD draw in a breath to protest. He keeps talking right over top of it, because if he doesn't say this in one full burst he's never going to be able to make it clear at all. "I understand. I do. But baby, you gotta believe me that there ain't nothin' that could make me change my mind." 

He's distracted enough, emotional enough, that the endearment slips from his lips without him consciously allowing it; he's always so careful not to say it where JD can hear, because he thinks JD would find it an insult. But JD doesn't protest, and Cam keeps going. "You need to be able to come home and feel clean again. Feel like you got someone who can show you what you were like before you had to go do the things you thought you'd never have to do again. But --" 

Cam can hear his voice catching, and he can't _stand_ it; he knows JD won't think him weak for having the emotions, or for letting them show. Not anymore, at least. Once upon a time, JD -- O'Neill -- might have. But Cam can't let this get clouded up by all the things swelling around in his heart and in his head, because this is _important_ , important in a way that none of their arguments have quite been up until now. 

He rolls himself over in the bed, coming around to face JD, even though he can't see anything (new moon, closed blinds, no light in the room but the tiny anemic nightlight plugged in next to the door in case Cam has to get up in the middle of the night and hit the john). It takes him a second to find JD's face with his fingertips, but once he does, he can read the expression there, through touch and through knowledge of what there has to be. JD's face is just as he expected it: carefully blank, schooled to nothingness, expressionless and controlled. Cam leaves his fingertips on the curve of JD's cheekbone and says, picking through the minefield of potential words, "Partners. For now. For always. Forever. For everything. _Everything_. I see you. I know you. All of it, all the way through. You gotta trust me to stand by your side."

They're words he never thought he'd say. _Forever_. It isn't like he's never been in love before; he's had lovers and he's had people he's loved and he's had people he's been in love with. But it's the first time he's ever said _always, everything_ to anyone, and he means it with all his heart.

Underneath his fingertips, JD's face twists. Cam can't read the lines of it, but he thinks it means that they're words JD never thought he'd be able to hear, never again. And Cam thinks of Sara O'Neill, and he thinks of a baby boy with Jack O'Neill's features, and he thinks about all the times either of them, JD or Jack, heard _always_ and knew it to mean _while we can_.

There isn't anything he can say to convince JD. All he can do is hold on in the dark and trust that all their trials, all the roads they've walked to get to the here-and-now, have shown JD that Cam means exactly what he says. Means everything that he says, means everything he does, means everything they are to each other. 

"I never expected you," JD says. The words sound like they're being torn out of him. "I never wanted -- I never thought --" 

"I know," Cam says. He lets his hand fall away. He's done his best, and he's said his piece, and everything after this is up to JD now.

There's a long silence, and Cam tries to remember to breathe. Then JD shifts: fractional, minute. "Roll over," he says. His voice is low and desperate. "I need --"

And Cam bites his lip, and he rolls over in the dark, thinking that he's done something wrong, said something wrong. That what JD needs is for Cam to be quiet, and let JD hold on. And he'll take it. It's better than driving JD up-and-out, sending him away (making him feel like he has to be away) and going back to their silences. "I love you," he says, because it's important for him to say it. And he thinks that they've come far enough that JD will be able to hear without wanting to push him away.

"Shut up," JD says. Cam's heart sinks in his chest, thinking he pushed too far, thinking he's stepped wrong and screwed up. And then JD rests his forehead against the back of Cam's skull and wraps his arm around Cam's chest, holding on so tightly Cam can't quite breathe, and JD says, "Everything." 

It's an admission, and a concession. Confession and pledge and capitulation all wrapped into one. And JD sounds like he can't decide if he's desperate or joyous at the meaning of it. 

"Here's what I need you to do," JD says. 

And the love in it, the sheer depth of _trust_ , makes Cam shut his mouth and listen, where he wants to argue and poke and prod and rail against the dangerous parts. Because JD's plan is stupid and it's crazy and it's dangerous, and it's breathtaking in its audacity and it's nothing like what Cam thought he was going to come up with. But JD's right. It's the only thing that has a more-than-fifty-fifty chance of working.

Christmas is bittersweet this year. Would have been even without the knowledge of what's about to come hanging over them. It's not the first Christmas Ash hasn't been there for, not by a long shot; there are always a few open places at the table come Christmastime, left for the people who can't be there for one reason or another. But it's the first year there's no chance of Ash ever coming back, and Cam misses his baby brother so much it makes him want to put down his head and cry -- when Momma takes out the stockings and has to fold one of them back up again to put it away, when Cindy has to leave the room and comes back with her eyes red and swollen, when Chandler or Stewart gets quiet and soft and Cam can see them holding back the words _Daddy said_. 

But Cam keeps his mouth shut, and he doesn't think -- doesn't let himself think -- about how things come in threes. Births. Deaths. Disasters. Because he left that conversation, alone in the dark with JD's body pressed up against him, with a promise that he'd be here waiting as long as he had to, and he'd have faith that JD would come home safely to him, because he knows that's what's going to keep JD during those long and lonely nights when he's pretending to be something he isn't. 

_I could not love thee, dear, so much, lov'd I not honor more._ And Cam sits in the living room and watches JD pulling packages out from under the tree, handing them over to the person whose name is written on the tag, and he watches the way JD laughs and smiles and pretends nothing's wrong. He watches JD sitting on the floor, leaning his back against the couch, AJ curled up on his chest and Jason in his lap and Sarajane sitting next to him and resting her head against his shoulder. He watches the way JD leans into him, so subtly and unconsciously that Cam thinks JD might not even know he's doing it. 

And Christmas night, after all the sugar's worn off and the toys have been put away and the kids have been put to bed, Cam puts the kitten out and locks the door to the bedroom and makes love to JD, lets JD make love to him, until he's so tired his eyes are crossing and he drifts away to sleep before he can get his brain and his mouth to coordinate long enough to say _I love you_ one last time.

JD is gone when Cam wakes up; the bed is cold, and there's a kitten curled up on the other pillow. Cam opens his eyes, and when Squeaker yawns and stretches and then tucks himself back up with a paw over his face, Cam feels so much, so deeply, that all he can do is close his eyes again and pray.

All the wishing in the world won't make things so, though, and so he gets himself out of the bed and into his clothes, grabs his cane and his shower kit and thumps himself down the hallway and washes himself clean, sweat and lube and come and tears all alike. By the time he's out, AJ's howling, and Cam knows everyone else is waiting for JD to go and hush him up. And JD could be out for a run, and JD could be down in the basement, and JD could have ducked out to the market for something they've run out of in the kitchen, but Cam knows better. Because JD's bag has been sitting, packed, in the bottom of the closet for the past two days, and when Cam woke up this morning, that bag was gone.

Cam takes himself into AJ's room and goes through the motions that are as natural to him as breathing. Changes AJ's diaper, feeds him and burps him. AJ's fussing, still, and Cam closes his eyes, knowing that it's a sound they're going to have to get used to. "I know," he says. "I know, baby. I miss him too."

But the morning's too full of things to do for him to cry like the baby's crying, and so he straps AJ into the baby sling -- he might not be the one AJ wants, but AJ won't ever settle unless he's held up against _someone's_ heartbeat -- and goes to find himself a cup of coffee and some of the leftover muffins for breakfast.

Momma's in the kitchen when Cam gets there, and he has to stop when he sees her, because she looks worn clear through, in a way that she's starting to look more and more often. The stress of a houseful of family at Christmas never used to do her in, but it's been a bad year and it's not over yet. But Momma doesn't miss much, even when she's exhausted; her eyes are sharp as she looks at the baby, then up at Cam again. "JD sleeping in?" she asks.

And this, this is going to be the hard part. This is going to be the part that tears Cam clear in two. Because there's no way he can make this look like what it really is. There's no way he can make Momma understand, not without telling her secrets that aren't his to tell, and it's like to be the death of him. "No," he says, quiet and strong. "Momma. I need to ask something of you."

She sets her coffee mug down on the table with a soft click. She can tell, Cam thinks. Theirs is the kind of family that can call on each other for anything and everything, without having to ask, without having to give advance warning that they're about to ask. His phrasing it like that is a clue, and he can see Momma bracing herself, wondering what the king hell is going on. "You know you don't have to," she says.

Cam knows. But there's a ritual to this sort of thing, an asked-and-answered solemnity that brings it weight and dignity. "You know there are things we aren't telling you," he says. "You know there are things we can't tell you."

Momma sniffs, disdainfully. "Body'd have to be dead to miss that much," she says.

Cam closes his eyes. He can feel the winter-morning sunlight coming through the kitchen window; it feels good on his face. "I need you to believe in me," he says. "I need you to trust me. What's going to happen in the next few days, I need you to remember through it. We're doing this because we need to. Because it's important. Because it's the right thing to do, the honorable thing to do, and I need you to believe that's the truth instead of what it looks like."

"He's gone and left you, didn't he," Momma says.

The words burst from Cam's lips. "No. _No_. He left. But he didn't leave _me_. Didn't leave us. He's -- had to go do something. I can't tell you. I can't." He rests his cane against the side of the counter and braces himself, curls his fingers around the edge of the counter and just breathes. In. Out. "I wish I could. Oh, God, Momma, I wish I could. But it's important to me that you don't think the worst of us. Of him. Of this."

He's not sure what he's expecting, but a minute later, Momma's hand descends on his shoulder. For a minute he wishes he was fourteen years old again, bringing his problems home to Momma and setting them in her lap for her to cluck over and then solve with no more trouble than she would have sewn up a ripped sleeve. But he's a grown man now, and he knows it's impossible.

"Seems to me like --" she starts, but she's interrupted by the sound of the swinging doors being pushed open. 

"Aunt Sassy, Aunt Cindy Lou wanted to know if you had the --" And Cam closes his eyes, because the universe hates him; it's the one person in the entire house who has a chance of seeing through him to the root cause of what's got him in a mood. When he turns around, Spence is looking in between the two of them, his face chagrined. "Sorry. Didn't realize you were in here, Uncle Cam."

"It's okay," Cam says. He knows Spence isn't missing the fact that JD's nowhere to be seen, that Cam's the one holding AJ. Spence is here until the day after New Year's; SG-9 is the diplomatic unit, and the IOC negotiators they tend to escort don't work during the holidays. If they'd just waited another week to put this into action, Cam could have been assured of fewer pointed questions.

Then again, he wouldn't have had anyone around who actually knew what was going on, either. Which is part of why, he thinks, JD picked _now_. Best to have someone he doesn't have to lie for. It's the kind of subtle gift JD would have wanted to leave.

"Finish your sentence, Spencer," Momma says, and Spence tears his eyes away from Cam to look back at her.

"Ah. Aunt Cindy Lou wanted to know if the load of laundry finished up. Lucy had a little accident with the potty training, and Cindy doesn't have anything clean to put her in." Spence flicks his eyes back to Cam, and Cam can see the sympathy written there, plain as day. It sets his teeth on edge. "And she said to ask you if you had any extra rags, 'cause the upstairs closet is out."

Momma sighs. "I'll go give the girl a hand," she says. "Cameron, don't you go anywhere. We're not done talking yet."

"Yes, ma'am," Cam says, in an undertone, and turns back to the coffeemaker to finish pouring himself a cup of coffee. Not right that a body should go through all this in the morning before he even gets to the caffeine.

Too much to hope that Spence will just _go away_ , and sure enough, as soon as Momma's gone, Spence is crossing the kitchen on silent feet. "You look like someone punched you in the gut," Spence says. "You all right?"

Cam laughs. It's supposed to be a quick dismissal, but it catches him, and the next thing he knows, it's bubbling up from deep in the back of his throat and threatening to overwhelm him. It's not quite hysteria, but it's the closest he wants to come to it, and he just leans himself back against the side of the counter and buries his face in his hands. Because no, he's not all right, and he's not going to be, not for a while. Not until this is all over. The hard part's just starting, and his family is going to be dragged into this after all, and there is nothing on God's green earth he can do to make it better in the least.

By the time it's run its course, he realizes that Spence is standing next to him. On his bad side, holding on, holding him up, careful not to bump the baby, but letting Cam lean on him, standing straight and tall like Cam can hold on for as long as he needs to. Cam pulls himself back and sniffles; Spence just leans behind him and snags a napkin from the holder on the counter, handing it over so Cam can blow his nose. There's something new in his face. Something different than Cam's ever seen there before. Spence has always been the more grown-up of the twins, and he's been serving in warzones for long enough that there's nothing immature left about him, but now, all of a sudden, Spence looks _adult_.

The Stargate program does that to people. Good people. Chews them up and spits them out on the other end, as strangers. 

"It's starting, then," Spence says. 

AJ -- who has been remarkably quiet through the whole thing -- bounces himself in his carry-sack and bangs a fist against Cam's shoulder. Cam reaches down, automatically, to give the baby a finger to hang on to. "Yeah," he says. "Yeah. It is."

Spence just nods. "You tell me what you need from me, then," he says. "I'm here for another week. You've got me until then, as much or as little as you can tell me."

Looking at him, Cam thinks that this isn't the kind of life he ever wanted for anyone he loves. The sneaking, the lying, the sacrifices. Spence without Skipper is like half a person, and Lord only knows when Skipper's going to be back. If Skipper's going to be back. Cam knows the casualty rates from Atlantis; JD didn't want to tell him, but he insisted. There's a bang from upstairs -- God knows what it is, but it means the house is starting to wake up, and the kitchen's going to be overrun any second now. "Later," he said. "But if we don't get the chance --"

Voices, from just outside. Cam feels like he wants to scream. "Yeah?" Spence says, quick and fast.

"Lie," Cam says, before anyone can interrupt them. "When they come. Lie through your teeth. About everything."

There are questions in Spence's eyes, but Miranda's bustling into the kitchen full of noise and hustle, and Spence doesn't have a chance to ask them. "Oh, thank God, Cam," she says, arms full of squalling three-year-old. "Hey, listen, I'm looking for JD; I gotta run to the store, and I was wondering if he'd watch Jason --"

Spence looks away from Cam and reaches out to take Jason from Miranda's arms. "I got him," he says. "You go."

Miranda looks between them. "Is everything okay?"

Cam's going to get really tired of that question, really damn fast. "Yeah," he says, grabbing his cane in one hand and his mug of coffee in the other and making his way for the back door to go hide in the office. "Yeah. Everything's fine. Everything's just damn fucking peachy."

He stays in the office for most of the rest of the day. AJ's got a playpen in there, full of toys that will keep him mildly occupied at least; as long as he's close enough to the desk that Cam can reach out and pick him up whenever he starts fussing too loudly, it's all good. And the longer he stays in the office, the less he's going to have to explain to the family. He's expecting a visitor or two -- Spence, come to ask more questions; Momma, come to finish the conversation -- but they leave him alone. Maybe someone in the family is finally learning tact. More likely, there's just some crisis going on in there that's eating up everyone's attention.

He expects dinner to be a torment. For the most part, they're down to just the regular complement of household inhabitants, and not even all of them; the day after Christmas is usually for Mitchell offspring to gather up the spouse and the kids and take them to the other set of grandparents for a holiday visit. Cam had been looking forward to the peace and quiet in order to get some work done, but he hasn't accomplished anything except staring at the screen for the whole damn day. Hasn't even been able to win a single game of Minesweeper.

Momma sends Spence out to pick Cam up for dinner; there's been talk of installing an intercom, but it's never been necessary. There's always been someone around to run out and play fetch. Cam's just glad it's not one of the younger kids; they idolize JD, and he's not quite ready to answer questions yet. "I told them JD had an emergency," Spence says, quietly, as they walk across the lawn. "They think it has something to do with his family. I didn't say that, but I implied it really heavily. They think it's something messy and he bailed on out of here to keep it from exploding on us."

"Thanks," Cam says, quietly. It's not going to work. But it was quick thinking, and he appreciates it. Spence has probably been spending the entire afternoon dropping things in the right ears, nudging so subtly that even the people in _this_ family aren't realizing they're being nudged. It's good of him to try. Cam's pretty lucky to have him.

"Later on tonight," Spence says, just as they're reaching the back steps -- only the front half of the house is equipped with a ramp, and Cam's feeling just ornery enough not to walk around, no matter _how_ much he hurts like blazes from spending the whole day all tensed up and the stairs won't do him any damn good. "I know you probably don't want anyone to overhear, and I know you probably just want to go hole up and ignore all of this. But later on tonight, I want to know what the plan is, and how I can help."

"Yeah," Cam says. There's more he should say, all the parts about how he's grateful that he has Spence there to run interference for him, all the polite things and the kind things and none of the things about how he's not sure he can do this and get through it. But he doesn't feel like talking. He transfers his cane to the other hand and grips the railing, gritting his teeth through each and every one of the stairs (four steps up: a fucking mountain to climb, and it's not fair, it's not _fair_ , he used to take them in two giant leaps and he never even _thought_ about it, like all the other things he used to take for granted until they were taken away from him). 

"Uncle Cam," Spence says. Quietly, because the door's open and there's light spilling out of the kitchen, noise and bustle, and just because the rest of the family haven't noticed that Cam and Spence are out here doesn't mean that they should be overheard. "I'm not going to say it's going to be all right. Because you know as well as I do that things like that don't mean anything. But he's smart and he's tough and if anyone's going to be able to do it, however he's decided to do it, it'll be him."

And Cam sighs, because Spence is only trying to help, and Cam has the feeling that he's going to be relying on Spence's help a lot this week. But JD might have been learning to open up from Cam, but Cam's been learning to keep his mouth shut from JD. The last thing he wants right now is to talk about his feelings. They're so big, so messy, that if he starts talking about them, he's going to be on his knees on the porch howling loud enough that the neighbors five miles away are going to be able to hear. "I know," he says, though, because Spence is trying, and the last thing Spence deserves is to get snarled at. "I know. I'm just ... this is going to get messy. Because we gotta build him a cover, without anybody here knowing what they're doing. And I'm damn out of practice in lying like that."

Spence cocks his head and frowns. "You can explain that later," he says. "But -- It's all right, Uncle Cam. You might be out of practice at lying. But diplomacy is just lying with a whole government's force behind you. I've got enough practice for both of us."

It makes Cam's lips quirk, just a little. Not a smile. Not even amusement, really. But Spence smiles back at him, and it's enough to get them both into the house and sitting down at the dining room table for dinner.

Nobody asks Cam about JD. But it's the kind of not-asking that's ostentatious in its absence, like the elephant sitting in the room that nobody's mentioning, and half of it is sympathy ( _poor Cameron; Lord only knows what that boy of his is up to, but any fool can see it's leaving him a wreck_ ) and half of it is censure ( _poor Cameron; Lord only knows what that boy of his is up to, but whatever it is, it can't be good_ ). His daddy's in the second camp. It's hard to convey disapproval in a simple request to pass the potatoes, but Daddy's always been able to do it, and now's no different. Cam's expecting any minute for Daddy to burst out with an I-told-you-so, and Cam doesn't know what he'll do if he gets it, but it's not going to be pretty and he's not sure he'll be able to make it through.

Momma's watching him, too, and that doesn't help. The conversations he's not having are piling up like cordwood, stacking on top of each other and just waiting to come crashing down. Cam doesn't remember putting a single bite of food in his mouth, but he must have, because the next thing he knows the dishes are being cleared and Momma's standing up and saying, "Cameron, you give me a hand with something in the next room." If he lives to be a hundred, he's never going to lose the instinctive stomach-plummeting sensation that accompanies those words, and tonight is no different.

She takes him out onto the front porch, and it's cold outside, cold enough that Cam's hip starts to ache within a few minutes of leaving the warmth of the house, but she doesn't seem to notice. "You sit yourself down there," she says, and points at the porch swing. "And you tell me why I've had to spend the whole day defending your boy to your father without a word of help from you."

It's brisk and it's bracing and it's completely Momma, in words and in delivery, and Cam opens his mouth to feed her another set of lies and bursts into tears.

He's cried more in the past twelve hours than he's cried in the past twelve months, except for that week he doesn't want to think about at all, and Momma takes one look at him and all of her upset melts away. She settles herself next to him on the swing and the next thing he knows he's being rocked against her shoulder, the way she used to do when he was little, and he holds on and cries like his world is ending and all she does is stroke his hair and make little soothing noises until he finally hiccups and falls silent.

Momma's still got her apron on from cooking, and she fishes in a pocket and comes up with a kitchen towel to pass it over to him. He uses it to wipe his eyes, and then says screw it and blows his nose in it. It's either that or use the hem of his shirt, and either way, he's going to have to do the laundry. Chores don't wait for you to save the world, he thinks, and for a second he can't decide if he's going to burst out laughing again or go back to watering Momma's shoulder. But he hangs on, barely, and sniffles a few times and blows his nose again.

"Oh, baby," Momma says, and the sound of her voice would break Cam's heart, if he wasn't starting to think his heart was already breaking. "Oh, my baby. I'm so worried about you."

"I'm all right," he says, his voice thick with tears and snot, and takes a breath to start doing damage control. He shouldn't have broken down like this; he shouldn't have even asked Momma for her grace, this morning. Momma already suspects something's going on, and Momma's no idiot. But she holds up a hand to stop him, and he falls silent.

"You hush up for a minute and listen to me," she says. "I'm going to say something, and I know you can't tell me yes or no, but you can at least know that I know it, and maybe that'll make you feel better. You been lying to me for years, Cameron Everett, and I know exactly why you have been, and I know why you have to do it. You been doing what you think you need to do, because we raised you to do the right thing and we raised you to know your responsibility and your duty. And part of that duty is doing the things that you can't talk to to anybody, for any reason at all. Not even to make your momma stop worrying about you."

It hits uncomfortably close to home, and he opens his mouth again -- to protest, to stop her -- but she gives him the _look_ , the one that's been shutting him up since he was old enough to recognize it. "I said hush," she says, firm and implacable. And he hushes. "And then we get the phone call in the middle of the night telling us that you've been hurt, and your daddy and I aren't anybody's fools, because we knew damn well that what happened to you, what you went through, wasn't any training accident. And we kept our mouths shut, and we didn't say anything, because we raised you right and you said it was important and if you said it was important, it was. Because I know damn well that you know what important is. And I watched a part of you dying in that hospital bed, and I watched you look like you were fixing to be miserable for the rest of your life because you couldn't climb on back out of it and go back to whatever important things you were doing, and I kept my mouth shut and I didn't say anything. Because you're a grown man, and you make your own choices, and we raised you to stand on your own two feet and handle things yourself, but we always knew that you knew you had a home to come back to and people to call on when you needed us."

He almost protests the "own two feet", because it's not something he'd be bothered by normally -- "crippled" isn't a dirty word in this house, and nobody dances around the topic of Cam's injuries, and nobody ever does the self-conscious thing where they say something that could be considered tactless and then fall over themselves to apologize. But he's feeling fragile and crystalline today, and Momma sounds like she's building a head of steam to a conclusion he isn't going to like. He isn't going to interrupt again, though. You don't interrupt Momma when she's working up to a lecture.

"I said to you before," Momma says, "and I'll say to you again. Any damn fool can see that you're into something big. And I wish like hell you could tell me, but the fact you can't means that it's something just like what you were up to before you wound up in that hospital bed. Because if it wasn't, you'd tell me. You wouldn't be so miserable about the fact that you can't say a word. And that boy of yours, he's too damn young to be up to the same sort of things you were, but he's got the same look in his eye that you get when you talk about it. And you asked me this morning to trust you, and you asked me this morning to believe in you, and I know you know just how easy it would be for me to think that he broke your heart and left you standing. But you say he hasn't. And Spencer has spent the whole day pretending like he isn't trying to build you both a story, and I know Spencer like I know you, and I know that he knows what important is, just like you do. And he's sworn the same oaths you have, and anybody can see that he knows exactly what's going on, and the two of you are both pussyfooting around like someone shot your dog and your boy's gone missing."

She takes a deep breath, and Cam suddenly doesn't want to hear what she's about to say, because anything he could say back, any reaction he can give, is going to give too much away. But she doesn't stop. "So I'll tell you what you're doing. Because you need to know that I know. You might have left the Air Force, but the Air Force didn't leave you. And I don't know what in the name of God your boy's got to do with it, but he's in just as deep as you are, and he's gone off to fix up something that you can't. And I've been thinking that for months now, and I've been keeping my mouth shut, and God only knows why they need to use a _child_ \--" 

There's anger in her voice, but Cam's starting to hope, because it's not anger at _him_. It's anger at whoever (she thinks) got them into this, anger at whoever won't leave him and JD alone, and for all that he wants to protest her assumptions, it still makes his heart leap, because Momma's only that fierce in defense of people she loves. "But whatever it is, whatever he's doing, it's something big enough that you're scared as hell that he ain't coming back to you. And your daddy may think that boy's run off on you, but your daddy's a blind man, because any fool can see that it'd take a crowbar and some heavy explosives to pry that boy loose from your side. So that tells me just how damn important this is."

And Cam knows he should protest, knows he should tell her that she's gotten it all wrong and let her go on thinking that JD's exactly what he appears to be -- that JD's left, that JD's gotten tired of him, that it's nothing more than a teenager's capricious whims. But he can't. It might make him weak, but he's so raw and aching inside that he _needs_ this. Needs his momma to tell him it's all right. "I can't tell you yes or no, Momma," he says, and he knows Momma will know it for an answer.

She takes the kitchen towel from him and turns it to a clean corner, blots away a tear he hadn't quite noticed. "I know you can't, baby," she says, and her voice throbs with a boundless sympathy. "Don't need to. Nothing wrong with my mind, and you boys have been trying to get around me for long enough that I know all the ways you think you're being clever. And I don't know what you're doing, and I don't know what _he's_ doing. And it's no secret that I didn't approve of him when you brought him home, but I've watched him stand up with you and with this family, and I'm not too proud to admit when I'm wrong. Wherever he is, whatever he's doing, for you and for this country, if you got a way to talk to him, you tell him that I'm proud of him and I hope he comes back safe."

There are tears welling up in Cam's eyes again, but he blinks them away. "I can't," he says. "I don't. I won't, not until --" He takes a deep breath. "But that means a lot. Oh, God, Momma, you have no idea."

She pats his thigh. "I do know, baby," she says. Then her voice turns back to being brisk, the same as he's heard from her as far back as he can remember. Momma's never shied away from emotion, never made him feel less by word or deed for showing it, but she doesn't believe in wallowing, either. "Now you go back there to your office, and you shut and lock that door, and you have yourself a good cry. You let me handle your daddy, and you let me handle everything else. And tomorrow, you can help me strip all the guest bedrooms and do the laundry, if you don't hurt too badly, and we'll do some baking. Best to keep busy."

There's a heavy sympathy there, the voice of experience. Cam remembers all the years when it was Momma and Gran'ma and all the aunts and cousins, bustling around the house: cleaning and cooking and mending, the perfect model of domesticity, and he always thought it had to do with a model of behavior programmed into them in the cradle. 

_Women's work._ Cam's taken some heavy teasing throughout his life, for the fact that he knows baking and sewing and knitting and all the best ways to clean out a grotty shower. _Raised by women_ , has always been his excuse, a laughing dismissal of gender roles so deeply programmed in the people around him that he's never known where to start in trying to dismantle them. And he's just as susceptable as anyone else, even when he knew that Momma and Gran'ma would box his ears at any suggestion that women's work was any less valuable, because even through all of it, he's shut it up into the same categories everyone else does.

But he sees the difference now. It's not women's work, or men's work, or anything so neatly-packageable as that. It has to do with tending, and with nurturing, and with making a place you can call your own. It has to do with building things with your own two hands and keeping them safe and secure. It has to do with keeping yourself busy, and giving yourself something to take your mind off the fact that the people you love are doing things they might not come back from, and filling your days up with tasks and duties to keep yourself from getting sick with worry.

It has to do with reminding the people who go and do the things that you can't -- because of temperament, because of ability, because of circumstance and necessity -- that there's a home to come back to, and that home is valuable, and that home is worth defending at any cost.

He's been on both sides of the divide now. And both of them hurt like hell. 

"I will," he says. To all of it. This isn't the house he and JD bought together, it isn't the home they've made together, it isn't the home they will ( _God, please, let us_ ) grow old in together. But it'll always be his first home, no matter how many other houses and apartments and barracks he's lived in, and the first home always stays in your heart.

Momma wraps her arms around him again. "I love you," she says. "Don't you ever doubt that."

And he buries his face in Momma's hair, and he holds on for just that extra minute, and then he gets himself up to his feet and makes himself smile. "I never have," he says, and takes himself on around back. Maybe he can get some work done today after all.


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prayer is just a demand to the universe: _make it be some way other than it is_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Originally [posted](https://synecdochic.dreamwidth.org/170069.html) 2007-12-02 .)

## 

eleven

It takes three more days for the other shoe to drop, and by the time it does, Cam's like to jump out of his skin with the waiting. When it comes, it's eleven o'clock on Friday afternoon, and the world outside is white and perfect with new-fallen snow. The house full of children have mostly packed themselves into snow gear and gone out to build and conquer forts in the back forty. He's not listening for the car -- he made himself stop jumping at shadows, because he was starting to get some penetrating looks. He's sitting at the kitchen table, with his laptop in front of him and a mug of coffee going cold, and the doorbell comes as a complete surprise.

"I got it," Carter yells, thumping down the stairs, and Cam can just hear the choked off "oh, God" as Carter opens the door, which tells him that it's gotta be one of the official government cars sitting out in the driveway and a bunch of men in uniform on the other side of the door. Carter's wife is in Qatar right now, and she's not the only one who's overseas.

Cam closes his eyes and braces himself. The murmur of voices from the hallway is indistinct, but he can imagine what they must be saying. He knows how he would write the script: reassurances first, because no matter that this whole pageant is as scripted as a reality TV show and staged for one single purpose, the man who's directing it still knows what it means to be kind. Then the requests, no less ironclad for being phrased in a gentle fashion.

He closes the lid of his laptop and pushes it out of the way, then gets himself up from the table. He wants to be standing on his own two feet when his curtain cue comes.

A minute later, Momma is leading the party of callers into the kitchen, her voice drifting ahead of her. "--happy to help in any way we can, General, but I just don't know how much help we can be," she's saying. Cam's already reaching for the cabinet doors, ready to fetch down glasses for the sweet tea Momma's going to be offering any minute now. He doesn't turn around when he hears the kitchen doors open.

"This is my son, Cameron," Momma says, and Cam takes a second to make sure he's not going to be giving anything away with the look in his eye before he turns around.

Momma's standing straight and tall, but Cam can tell -- by the look on her face -- that she knows something's going on here. The men who've come to call are two and two: two in class As, two in suits and ties. Cam doesn't recognize either of the men in suits. One of them has a broad and welcoming face, cleanshaven, brown-haired, looks to be in his early forties; the other is older, his dark hair streaked through with grey, wearing a pair of glasses and holding a briefcase. Cam doesn't know the man in the Marine dress uniform and the colonel's silver eagles, but he knows who it must be: Colonel Reynolds, from the SGC, the man JD once called maybe the most competent man left there. And he knows the man in the General's uniform, and it hurts about as much as he thought it would to see Jack O'Neill standing in his momma's kitchen and looking back at him. 

O'Neill barely spares Cam a glance. "Colonel Mitchell," he says. There's nothing of JD in his eyes, in his carriage, but Cam can read the undercurrent anyway: _don't screw this up_. 

"Retired," Cam says. He holds up his cane. "Not my choice."

It isn't fair that he can read O'Neill and O'Neill can't read him, but he thinks O'Neill might get the message he's trying to convey: _yeah, I know._ "This is Colonel Reynolds," O'Neill says, making the introductions. "Agent Barrett. Agent Martinson. We need to ask you a few questions."

Cam doesn't pay Martinson any more attention than he pays any of the rest of them, no matter how much he'd like to. It isn't every day that you find yourself having to invite someone who's on the payroll of the only Goa'uld (known to be) active on Earth into your momma's kitchen, and it's harder than he thought it would be to keep from wanting to put himself in between Martinson and the rest of his family, no matter how little use he'd be if it came down to a fight. "Colonel," he says, instead, nodding to Reynolds, who nods back, his face impassive. "Agents. What can I do for you?"

"I'll leave you to it," Momma says, "and keep the rest of the house out of your hair." 

She makes a move to the door, but O'Neill holds up a hand. "Sorry, ma'am," he says. "We're going to have to talk to you all, if you don't mind. I'm very sorry for the inconvenience."

Cam can see Momma's spine straighten -- Generals or government or God himself, nobody tells Momma what to do in her own house. But she flicks her eyes over to him, and he doesn't know what's showing in his face -- doesn't know what he's giving away -- but whatever it is, it makes her nod. "All right," she says. "Cameron. You pour these gentlemen something to drink while they tell us what they're here for."

"Jonathan Nielsen," Martinson says. "We need to know everything you might be able to tell us about his current whereabouts."

It's a song-and-dance more delicate than any Cam's ever done before. And if JD'd had his way, it would have been honest, or at least less pretense; JD had been planning to get up and walk out with nothing but a time-delayed email telling Cam what to say when this party came calling. Cam's glad he put his foot down, because if he'd tried to play this as an improv, he would have wound up fucking it up. Even with knowing, even knowing that Martinson is the only interrogator who actually believes a word of what he's saying, it's hard as hell to hear them spinning a tale of JD as someone wanted for questioning by Homeland Security. 

They're careful. Very careful; there's a part of Cam that feels like it's watching the whole thing play out from a distance, critiquing the performance and giving the director's notes, and that part of him is amazed at how thorough a picture they can paint just by laying out the broad brush-strokes and letting their listeners fill in whatever details they need in order to make the story make sense. They've had practice, Cam thinks. Lots of it. He sticks to the script: he doesn't know anything about where JD might have gone; he's frantic with worry, been looking everywhere. (Carter hadn't said a word when they'd filed the missing-persons report with the police, but his silences had spoken volumes.) He doesn't know anything at all about what JD might be involved in, hasn't seen anything that might make him suspicious.

"Nothing?" Barrett asks, leaning forward across the table. Cam thinks he would almost like the man, if they'd met under different circumstances. There's a sort of integrity to him that Cam can see, shining through the bureaucratic nonsense. But no matter how much he knows Barrett's just playing a role like they're all playing roles, no matter how much JD had accorded the man a grudging respect, Cam can't forgive him the lies. "Books. Papers. Emails, maybe, or phone calls you might have overheard -- anything that might make you suspect where he's gone and what he's gone to do. Mysterious packages --"

Momma interrupts the litany. "I think I'd see what went on under my own roof," she says, tart and sharp. And Cam's just about to open his mouth and try to steer it back on course, because he knows what impressions he's got to get across, when he sees Momma do something amazing; she looks at him, just one quick glance, nothing more, subtle enough that he knows nobody else in the room would see it. And she finishes, as smoothly as though it had been what she'd been intending to say all along, "But he's a quiet boy, and God only knows what goes on in that office of theirs."

Cam wants to close his eyes in relief, but he can't. Can't afford to. Can't afford to give anything away. "I haven't --" he says, playing _confused_ and _uncertain_ and just a little lick of _scared_. "I haven't seen anything. I don't know what you're talking about. He wouldn't --"

"We just need to talk to him," O'Neill says, sliding smooth like butter in under what Cam's saying. "I don't know how much you know about his past. But we think he may have information that's vital to the security of the nation."

It's hard, so hard, not to break out laughing, in the midst of all the drama -- because really, there ain't nothing wrong with Cam's sense of irony, and this farce is taxing it whole. He can't think of anyone who has _more_ information vital to the security of the nation, by which O'Neill means _planet_ , than JD does. He knows damn well that they lost JD once -- when JD skipped town instead of staying put where they left him -- and he knows how relieved certain parties were when JD was through falling off the face of the earth. They both knew it would be naive to think that JD hasn't been under surveillance since the moment he showed up in Cam's apartment. This is exactly how it would have played out if JD had disappeared again for real.

Right down to the cover story they're feeding him and Momma, and O'Neill and his entourage are playing like they know the real story and think Cam doesn't, and Cam's playing like he doesn't know a damn thing even though he knows damn well O'Neill knows he does, and the whole thing is starting to feel like a French bedroom farce. "I don't --" he says, schooling his face into the expression he's been practicing since the minute he woke up to find his bed alone and empty. "I don't know anything. I just -- I woke up and he was gone, and he didn't tell me anything, and I don't know what happened to him and I just want him _back_ \--"

It's easier than he thought it would be, to make his voice crack and break. He can see, out of the corner of his eye, Martinson's expression of disgust. Something to play with there, then. Cam knows full well that the file on JD includes the fact that he and JD are partners in every sense of the word, and apparently Martinson has a problem with it.

Good. It'll make this easier.

Momma's getting angrier and angrier as O'Neill and his entourage go through question after question. Cam can tell. He stretches out a foot under the table, knocks it against hers; she tosses him a look, quick and sparse, and buttons her lip. Plays the part to the hilt, for all that Cam couldn't risk filling her in on what her part would have to be ahead of time: momma bear protecting her cubs, fierce and unwavering, but not stinting in recounting her suspicions, either. It hurts to hear Momma talking about how she's always known there was something not-right about JD, because it could have all too easily been real, and if it hadn't been for their conversation a few days ago, he would have thought it was. And Momma's anger is too real to be faked, and Cam knows full well what its source is: he's brought this home to her, and it's the one thing he didn't want to do.

He's in the middle of letting Barrett and Martinson quiz him carefully about JD's past -- and it's damn tricky to keep from stepping on his own tail, because they're _good_ , coming at things from every different angle possible, doubling back and charging forward and always trying to trip him up -- when the back door opens and Spence, in t-shirt and sweats, comes charging in. He's out of breath and sweaty; he'd been out for a run. And Cam's heart swells with pride for his baby cousin -- no baby any more -- because Spence snaps to attention as he sees who's in the kitchen and stares off into the distance, not looking at Reynolds -- who Cam knows damn well Spence last saw right before Christmas, as he was leaving the SGC -- and says nothing more than "sirs."

Cam doesn't look at Martinson. At all. He keeps his eyes on Barrett, who was the one who'd just been asking him questions, and he doesn't let himself stop to pray that JD was right, that he and Sam and O'Neill had managed to get the SGC records altered so Skipper and Spence's slots are listed as Corporals Maria and Melissa Ramirez, late of Boise, Idaho, and he doesn't let himself hope that Spence remembers everything Cam told him to say when they'd finally gotten a chance to have that conversation. Because this is the one weak spot. Martinson's access to SGC data is limited -- if it hadn't been, they'd have all been sunk long ago. And Ba'al needs to be able to verify that Cam's still friends with Sam, that Sam brought Teal'c home for Thanksgiving, true enough. But having Spence on the SGC payroll might just strain things a little too far.

"At ease," O'Neill says, mild and genial. "What's your branch and station, soldier?"

"Captain Spencer Griffith, General, sir," Spence says, his eyes still fixed on the wall. "Air Force. I'm with the 566th, Information Operations out of Buckley."

Momma's eyes narrow a bit -- she knows that's a lie; Spence's official papers read him as being attached to NORAD, just like Cam's official papers had listed him with the 414th out of Nellis. But she doesn't say anything, just chalks up another point against Cam for the day of reckoning he already knows he's in for when O'Neill and his company leave. There's nothing Momma hates more than feeling like she's being played, and Cam doesn't have a way to tell her that this play isn't for her benefit. 

Another round of introductions. O'Neill tells Spence to have a seat; Spence grabs himself a glass of water, drapes a towel around his neck, and does. Barrett and Martinson take Spence through the same set of questions they were asking Cam, and Spence fields them magnificently. He's worse at hiding his dislike for Martinson than Cam is, but that's okay. Doesn't have to like the guy in order to lie to him.

Cam hates lying -- always has -- but he's good enough at it when he has to be, and Spence is better at it than Cam thought. Although he should have suspected; he _still_ doesn't know what Spence and Skipper were doing before the SGC came calling, and JD won't tell him, only said that their record was damn impressive, and Cam knows what it takes to get an 'impressive' out of JD. And he knows that all of this is critical -- that it's vital for Martinson to be able to go back to his superiors (his _real_ superiors) and say not only that the Mitchell family had no idea who and what they were sheltering, but that O'Neill and his people -- at the SGC, at the NID, at Homeworld -- are frantic to get JD back. But it's _annoying_ , more than anything else, really; playing a role like this is wearying, and the only thing that keeps him going is the knowledge that JD's playing a far more potentially-deadly role, and this is what's going to prop him up.

Miranda and Carter usually do a pretty damn good job at keeping the rest of the house in check, but they can't keep the screaming hordes quiet forever; after about two hours in, Cam hears AJ waking up from his nap, howling himself stupid, and it makes him want to bang his head against the table, because -- as much as he loves his nephew, and he does love his nephew -- right now all he really wants to do is _shove a sock in his mouth_. And sure enough, after fifteen minutes of crying, Miranda comes in with a frazzled expression on her face and the baby in her arms. "Cam, I'm so sorry to interrupt you," she says, "but I can't get him to _shut up_ \--"

"It's all right," Cam says. He holds out his arms. "Give him here." 

And AJ looks like he's not going to stop fussing -- he's worked himself up to a good solid tantrum, the kind that he's been having more and more frequently in the past few days, the kind that can't get resolved by anything short of strapping him into a baby-sling and pacing miles of floor back and forth until it lulls him off to nothing more than quiet hiccups and the occasional whimper. The most Cam can hope to do, really, is to keep it from getting worse (and there's a little bit of Cam that hopes all the yelling gives Martinson a migraine that will last into _next week_ ). But Cam takes AJ anyway, cradles him in his arms because he took off the sling when AJ went down for a nap, and AJ shuts his mouth mid-howl and _stops_.

Except he's not looking at Cam. He's looking at O'Neill. Quiet and fascinated, his big baby eyes fixed on O'Neill's face and a look on his face that Cam would call 'puzzled' on someone older. 

_Shit_ , Cam thinks. Because Momma's sitting right there, and Momma's not an idiot.

He stands up -- can't juggle baby in two arms and cane in one hand, and he's _aching_ today, down deep in the bones where putting weight on his bad leg is like swords pushed through his hip, but there's nothing to be done for it -- and says, "'Scuse me for a minute, gentlemen, I left the baby sling out in the office, and if I don't get him tied up and a pacifer in his mouth, y'all ain't gonna be able to hear yourselves think." 

Three people -- Spence, Miranda, and Momma -- all look like they're about to offer to go give him a hand. He forestalls it by limping (every step a mile) towards the door; he's gotta get the baby out of here. Because he doesn't want Martinson anywhere near his nephew; because he doesn't want AJ anywhere near O'Neill. Momma doesn't look like she's cottoned on, yet -- it's not like AJ won't hush for Cam, half the time, at least -- but the last thing he needs is more questions. 

Behind him, he can hear O'Neill say -- to Miranda, must be -- "If you don't mind, Miss, the agents would like to ask you a few things." And then there's the scrape of chair against floorboard, and O'Neill's footsteps, so much like JD's and so much not. "I'll join you out in the office, if you don't mind me taking a look around, Mr. Mitchell."

Cam minds about as much as he'd mind _root canal_ , but he doesn't have to like any of this. He just has to do it. "That's fine," he says, still facing the door, and takes another step. Then another. It's only a couple hundred feet out to the barn; he can do it. He's gotta.

He's just set his teeth into his lower lip and taken the first step down the porch stairs -- no good way to do it; if he leads with the bad leg there's a chance he'll fall forward, if he leads with the good leg there's a chance he'll fall back, and either way he's heading for a bruising and he's cursing himself for pride and stubbornness and swearing to all the heavens that he doesn't care how bad he hurts himself as long as he doesn't drop the baby -- when O'Neill's hand closes around his elbow. And if there's anything he needed to remind him that O'Neill isn't JD, that they're two separate people with their own separate ways, it's that; JD would have known not to touch. It's only the fact that Cam's arms are full of baby that save O'Neill from an elbow to the gut. "Steady," O'Neill says, in his ear. "I've got your cane. Give me the kid."

And yeah, _root canal_ , but there's no better way to do it. Cam hands AJ over; AJ gurgles, and bangs a fist against O'Neill's arm. Cam takes the cane, cursing its necessity, cursing the fact that he can't even _walk down a flight of fucking stairs_ without needing to be rescued. "Thanks," he says, gritted out from between clenched teeth. 

"No problem," O'Neill says. To anyone watching -- and Cam knows there are people watching -- it looks like nothing more than a mild level of solicitousness, appropriate for an important man to be offering someone who's got information he needs. He knows O'Neill nurtures the image of someone who likes to give a hand when he can, anyway. "Come on. Let's go find the evidence he planted." 

This close, Cam can smell him. O'Neill doesn't smell anything like JD does. Cam's not sure if that makes it easier or harder.

They make it out to the office, and Cam's never before been more grateful for the fact that there aren't any windows -- either in the office, or in the part of the barn Daddy and Uncle Roy use for a workshop, though he knows damn well that _someone's_ run out to tell them that they have visitors (and he's pretty sure Momma somehow managed to convey the information that Daddy should stay put until he's needed, no matter that Momma's been right where Cam could see her the whole time). He shuts the door behind him and O'Neill and drops down into his desk chair, rubbing at the muscles in his thigh -- they're seizing up again -- and reaching for his bottle of narcotics, which he keeps out here because the door locks and so does the desk and he's always had JD at hand to be his legs when he needed them.

"You can put him in the playpen," he says, to O'Neill, while he's trying to get the pharmacy bottle open (fucking things aren't just child-proofed, they're everyone-proofed). "Sorry to stick you with him. Had to get him out of there before Momma saw the way he was staring at you."

When he looks up, he's a little startled to see the way O'Neill's looking down at the baby in his arms, with both pain and longing written across his face. He's more startled to find that he can recognize them both, because it's nothing more than a crook of the mouth, a narrowing of the eyes. But he knows that expression. "Why's that?" O'Neill asks. 

And Cam sighs, because -- for all that O'Neill is-and-isn't JD, for all that he swore up and down and sideways that he would treat O'Neill like a stranger -- there's still a part of Cam, down deep where the lizard hindbrain lives, that _recognizes_ him. And he knows how much this is going to hurt. "Because he took the idea into his fool head that JD's the closest thing he has to a daddy, and it's hard to tell a three-month-old why his daddy's gone away."

There's a second where the words don't -- quite -- penetrate through whatever shield O'Neill's built himself to get through this whole muddy nightmare. Cam sees when they do; it's a flash, a spike, of pain so deep, so quickly buried, that it makes Cam realize just _how fucking far_ JD's come. Had come, even before Cam knew him. Because the man standing in front of him hurts so much, in so many different directions, that Cam's amazed he's even still standing.

But all O'Neill does is nod, and his hands are gentle as he sets AJ into the playpen. Cam isn't exactly _looking_ , but he can't help but see the way it takes an extra second for O'Neill to pull back, the way O'Neill's eyes are sharp with regret as he turns away. O'Neill looks nothing like JD, really, unless you're looking, unless you know. But the eyes are the same, and Cam can't help but read them. 

"So," O'Neill says, after a minute of silence. "This is awkward."

The drugs haven't kicked in yet, and Cam would really like to hold this conversation off until they do, but where he could tell JD _just shut your damn fool mouth for five minutes until I'm not ready to die from hurting_ , all he can say to O'Neill is, "Yeah. Yeah, it is." He closes his eyes and presses down with the palm of his hand against the muscle along the outside of his thigh, which repays him by radiating waves of white fire down the entire length of his leg. He only manages to stifle the moan because he's in front of someone he has to consider company. "Let's just ... not talk about it, okay?"

"Yeah," O'Neill says. "Good plan." He pauses again. "We're pretty sure he made it. And we haven't heard anything that makes us think Ba'al hasn't fallen for the story."

It's welcome news, and later on, Cam knows he's going to take it for a comfort. Right now, it doesn't help. He lifts a hand and knocks over the stack of papers sitting on the desk -- better for verisimilitude -- before reaching for the other stack, the one JD left buried for inquiring eyes to find. "Yours," he says. It's the pile of stuff that'll make anyone who looks at it think that JD's been researching Farrow-Marshall for a few months; the irony of it is, they had to dummy it up. JD had been smart enough to keep from leaving a trail. "I got the duplicate of his laptop all ready for you to cart away, too." 

"Yeah," O'Neill says. "Thanks. If I come out of here with goodies, I can probably convince Martinson that he doesn't need to come out here to look."

"Wouldn't find anything, anyway," Cam says. "He's smarter than that. Still. Be nice not to have to clean up a trashed office after y'all leave."

It's weird, he thinks, how neither of them is saying JD's name. Or maybe it's not weird at all.

There's another minute of quiet. Cam can feel the pain receding a little; he took two pills, which is double his doctor's suggested dose, but he's been living with this pain long enough to know that it's set in now, and double the dose isn't going to do anything but take the edge off. He remembers when he used to get lightheaded and swoony when he took them; these days, the most he can feel is his stomach telling him it might be time to lose his lunch. Which he hasn't eaten, today, and he knows they're not going to get around to until after the entourage has departed. Momma might let them in her kitchen, but she's damn well not going to feed them.

He's about at the point where he's ready to decide that he and O'Neill are just going to sit here, quietly ignoring each other, for as long as it would be reasonable for O'Neill to be searching the office, when O'Neill says, "The two of you. You're --"

Hundred different ways that sentence could end, and O'Neill doesn't pick any of them. He just trails off, and Cam tries to read the look on his face, but for once he can't. "We're what?" he asks.

"Happy," O'Neill says. Half question, half statement. Like he's looking to confirm, or condemn, or maybe just describe. 

And Cam can't look at him, because if he looks, he'll want to -- well, he doesn't even know, which is why it's safest not to look. He picks up the rattle that's sitting on his desk -- relic of yesterday, when he tried every single damn toy in the office to catch AJ's attention, and none of them did a damn thing -- and turns it over in his hands, just to have something to fiddle with. "Yeah," he says. "Yeah. We are."

There's a lot more he could say; comfort he could offer, absolution he could grant. The secrets of all the things JD found, in those two years he was out looking, the things O'Neill doesn't even know he needs. But it's not Cam's place to offer them, and he doesn't think O'Neill wants to hear.

"I look at you," O'Neill says, soft and quiet and fast like if he doesn't say it all at once he won't be able to get it out at all, "and I know that you know things about me that I never wanted anyone in the world to know. And I don't know who I blame more: you for knowing them, or him for telling them."

Cam makes himself fold his hands over the rattle, keep his head down. "They're his, too," he says. 

The noise O'Neill makes is agony. "You have no idea how often I think about going back and stopping Loki before he ever touched me."

And there's something in the way O'Neill phrases it -- the nuances of word choice, the rhythms of delivery -- that makes Cam know, _know_ , he's not talking about hypotheticals. He doesn't know half of what goes on at the SGC, half of all the weirdnesses and outrageous things they've encountered over the years, but he knows this from nothing more than the way O'Neill said it: it isn't a game of let's-pretend. O'Neill _could_. Whatever form their time machine might happen to take, they've _got_ one, and O'Neill knows how to work it. And it makes Cam see red, makes him want to rise out of this chair and lash out, strike out, because _this is a threat_ and he's had _enough_ of things threatening what happiness he's managed to find.

"Don't you say that," Cam says, and when he lifts his head to stare O'Neill down, there must be something of his temper showing in his face, because O'Neill's face goes blank and shuttered and he knows it for the same look JD used to give him when the shouting was about to start. "Don't you dare. Don't you fucking _dare_. You left him with nothing. Nothing. He didn't ask for this and he didn't want it, and you threw him out the minute you could and you didn't give a shit whether he lived or died and he _knew_ that. He thought he was you. Thought he was himself. And then he found out he wasn't. And don't you fucking dare sit there with your bare face hanging out and tell me that you begrudge him one _inch_ of the life he's managed to make for himself, don't you sit there and tell me you wish you'd killed him or think about killing him now, because you know what, General? It'd still count as suicide, and I'm _sorry_ if your fucking conscience fucked off to Pegasus, but that _still_ don't mean you get to wreck the life he made from yours like you been trying to wreck your own."

He's got just enough presence of mind to remember to keep his voice down, because Daddy and Uncle Roy are right on the other side of that wall, because God only knows who else might be standing right outside the door and straining to hear. He's had enough practice to know just how far voices will carry. So instead of the full-on holler he wants it to be, it's low and soft and vicious instead, and he can see that every word is going straight to O'Neill's heart. Because O'Neill might have known that Cam knew, but hauling out Daniel Jackson is a _low_ fucking blow, and Cam's ashamed of it the minute he hears the words coming out of his mouth.

Would be ashamed of it. Should be ashamed of it. If he weren't so damn fucking _livid_. Because he knows, he can tell, that O'Neill thinks of JD as nothing more than a -- than a _mistake_ , a copy, a duplicate. Some kind of doppelganger chimera that doesn't deserve to live. And Cam knows, in that minute, that he'd do battle with O'Neill ten times over and kill the man with his _bare fucking hands_ if he so much as thinks about doing something about it, because JD is _his_.

And he can see O'Neill taking it to heart. In those few words, Cam has done more to make the totality of his and JD's relationship become _real_ to O'Neill, make it rear up and present itself and shove itself into O'Neill's face, than any number of facts and statements and pictures. Because O'Neill could know that Cam and JD were working together, O'Neill could know that they were living together and sleeping in the same bed, O'Neill could see the two of them together and their casual ease, and all of it could have been explained away, if O'Neill had been determined enough not to see. But the wild unrestrained fury Cam's presenting him now, the instinctive and primal need to _defend_ , is something that only comes from love. Love that runs so deep it can't be anything other than what it is.

It's no easy thing for O'Neill to swallow. Cam sees it, and the blend of pain and envy and anger makes him bite back some of his own temper, because as much resentment as he's carrying for Jack O'Neill on JD's behalf -- and it's so much more than he'd thought it was -- he still doesn't take any delight in hurting people who don't deserve it. So he makes himself take a deep breath, let it out on a sigh. "I'm sorry," he says. "That was uncharitable, and uncalled-for, and I shouldn't have said it."

"No," O'Neill says. "No. You shouldn't have." 

Back to the silence, and this time it's enough to fill the entire room. Cam buries his face in his hands, tries to keep a rein on his breathing. He's on edge, and he's been on edge for days, and he knows this and the simple fact of knowing should mean he knows better than to let it all loose. He's learned enough self-control over the last few years, and they're playing for all the marbles this time, and he and O'Neill can't afford to be at each others' throats. So he breathes. "Once this is all over," he says, to his hands, giving O'Neill the courtesy of as much privacy as he can, "we'll get out of your hair, and you'll never have to see us again." It's as much of a gift as he can offer.

And maybe O'Neill hears it for what it is (peace offering, _promise_ , a hope Cam's giving to himself as much as he's giving it to O'Neill) and maybe O'Neill just wants to cut the conversation off at the knees. "I'll hold you to that," he says. But maybe there's something else going on in his head -- and Cam can guess at what it is, because he knows JD, _knows_ him, like he knows his own self by now, and JD came from O'Neill and shared history doesn't ever go away -- that makes O'Neill keep going, because he says, sounding like the words are torn out of him, "I am glad he has you."

Cam has an idea of what that costs O'Neill to admit. For JD to admit to any kind of need had been unthinkable, before Cam had taught him that need doesn't mean weakness. For O'Neill to admit to any kind of need -- by implication, by inference -- has to be about as welcome as those men in suits are in Momma's kitchen. It says something, that O'Neill is willing to say it, and it makes Cam feel small and petty in the face of such a gift. O'Neill is raw and aching just as much as Cam is, being forced to confront this evidence of a life he could have been leading, and still he's capable of reaching out and giving Cam what comfort he can offer. It's surprising grace, and it drives home once again the fact that Cam's sitting across from the man who the man he loves used to be. 

The seeds of JD were planted in the man he's sitting here with now, and even though Cam's pretty sure that it would take a miracle to get O'Neill to travel down the same road JD found -- or a set of circumstances so bizarre that there's no hope in hell they'll ever be repeated -- it doesn't mean that O'Neill doesn't deserve his respect. 

It makes him realize that the overtures O'Neill was making, the desire to know (to confirm) that Cam and JD are happy, came not from a desire for small talk, but from conflicting impulses, a need to _know_ like the grotesque and morbid fascination bystanders have for a car crash pileup warring with a need to think of it as little as possible lest the walls he's built up inside of him break down at the worst possible moment. O'Neill's been torturing himself already, Cam thinks; when he thinks of Cam and JD, the man must vacillate between regret and envy and revulsion. O'Neill is smart enough to know that he can't have what JD has without a damn lot of work done on a damn lot of uncomfortable things, and O'Neill is in a place where the things he'd need to do to get there are unthinkable. But that doesn't stop him from wanting to know what they _are_.

And it just goes to show, this is a day of irony, because Cam spent a few long hours a few nights ago explaining that very impulse to JD -- the need to know, the simple fact that knowing is better than not-knowing, because the things you build inside your head are worse than anything reality can offer -- and even at the end, JD didn't quite understand it, while O'Neill does. Cam wonders at what point JD stopped being able to see that. Had to have been early. Had to have come from the fact that he knew he'd never be able to know the details of the rest he was missing, the things in O'Neill's life that just plain weren't his anymore, and Cam's known for a while just how much that _sucked_ for JD, but it's been a long damn time since he had it driven home so sharply.

So he reaches out and grabs O'Neill's wrist, and he ignores the part of him that wants to say _familiar, beloved, mine_. O'Neill's skin is vibrating, like he's touch-starved and hungry, and he doesn't pull away. "It wasn't easy," Cam says. Picking his way through all the things he could say, all the things he shouldn't say. "None of it. We fought like cats and dogs and there were times when we wanted to kill each other and half the times he went slamming on out, I thought he just wasn't coming back. He's got a rage pinned up inside him that's deeper than anything I've seen before. And I can't say whether that's his or yours or something you share --" even though he _can_ , he knows, JD's told him enough for him to be able to guess; it's not his place to say, though, and O'Neill won't thank him for the knowledge. "But I can say this. He got past it. He made himself get past it. He said that the best thing he figured out how to do was to be honest with himself. And I met him when he was already well on the way to getting there, but it's the thing that saved him. It's the thing that made _us_ possible."

Cam remembers something JD said to him once, about O'Neill: _he's carrying a hell of a burden because nobody else will, and all he's trying to do is serve a whole bunch of complicated truths._ JD's truths are just as complicated, but at least he knows what they are. Cam doesn't finish what he's saying, because the next thing that he could say, the logical conclusion his words lead to, is _if he can do it, so can you, and you'll probably be happier for it._ But he knows O'Neill knows it's where he's going, and the expression in O'Neill's eyes is equal parts anger, fear, and desire.

O'Neill pulls his hand back. "Yeah, thanks for the lecture," he says, in the tone that means he wants to say anything but. "You got anything else you want to throw in my face?"

Cam knows that tone, though. It means O'Neill is thinking about something. All Cam can hope is that his words might find fertile ground.

He shakes his head. "No," he says, quietly. Feeling old, feeling exhausted, feeling wrung out. Can't help someone who doesn't want to be helped; he's learned that lesson a thousand times over. But he has to add, "For what it's worth, I am sorry."

"Way it goes," O'Neill says, and looks away. 

Cam sighs. The drugs have given him just enough of a cushion that he could get up, if he wanted to, if he had to. He doesn't. Want to, that is. But they've got things to do, still, and just because he doesn't want to do them doesn't mean they don't need done. "You about ready for round two?" he says.

O'Neill lifts a hand and rubs it across his face. "Yeah. Yeah, let's get it done. Sooner I can ditch that weasel, the happier I'll be." 

With a task to finish, it's a bit easier between them. Cam grabs his cane and uses it to snag the milk-crate sitting halfway across the office, ready to accept the things they're willing to have O'Neill haul off. It's only a minute's work to get it packed up, and a minute after that to test whether his leg's going to hold his weight before he straps the baby into the baby-sling and squares his shoulders. "C'mon, then," he says. "They also serve who only stand and pitch a holy fit in the kitchen."

O'Neill's lips quirk before he gets his face back under control. Then he's out the door, striding across the lawn -- just slowly enough that Cam can keep up with him, and it's interesting, isn't it, that O'Neill knows a cripple's pacing well enough to make it look natural. Cam follows, taking a second to get himself braced for the fit he's about to throw. And it's easier than he thought it might be to take fear and turn it into a good impression of fury; by the time he hits earshot of the kitchen, he's worked himself up to a fair head of steam.

"You can't just do that," he's shouting, as he gets his way up the stairs, and against his chest, AJ is whimpering in sympathy. He feels awful for putting the kid through this, but he couldn't just leave him in the office. "You can't come in here and haul off my things like that. Where's your fucking warrant? I _need_ that stuff, we've got a _contract_ \--"

His daddy's sitting at the kitchen table by now, with the rest of O'Neill's entourage questioning him and making notes, and it makes Cam wince -- inside, where nobody can see it -- because he's about to behave badly, and he never likes doing that in front of his daddy. But O'Neill is turning to the other men and saying, "Got what we came here for. We can clear on out now," and Cam grabs O'Neill by the shoulder and spins him on around. 

It's only the fact that they're play-acting that lets Cam do this, because if it were in deadly earnest, he'd never dare. "I want _answers_ , General," he snarls, and it does feel good to let out a bit of the worry he's been building up, in the form of a shout and a holler. "You come into my home, you question my family, you and your people insinuate that my partner -- who is _missing_ , by the way, and don't you think that I'm not worried sick about him -- is up to no good, and you are _not_ going to walk off without telling me what the _fuck_ is going on."

"Cameron," his daddy says, sharp rebuke, and Cam whips his head around.

"I'm sorry, Daddy," he says, and he _is_ , but there's nothing for it and it can't be helped. "But I want answers. I'm not going to stand here and listen to JD be accused of something he didn't do, not anymore --"

" _Cameron,_ " his daddy says, more insistent this time, and Cam can't help it; he shuts up. He's been programmed to listen to that tone of voice for as far back as he can remember. His daddy settles himself on both his forearm crutches and gets himself up out of the chair. "You be quiet and let these men do their job."

Cam's feeling sick to his stomach -- Lord only knows what his daddy's thinking, and Lord only knows what he's said already -- but he makes himself shake his head and keep playing his role. Momma rushes in from whatever task she'd gone on to, Spence right behind her. "What's all the shouting for?" she asks, and her eyes are darting back and forth between Cam's face and O'Neill's. And Cam's tired, he's worn straight through, but he gets through the fifteen minutes while O'Neill and his men gather themselves up and get themselves gone, railing imprecations down on their heads the whole way. Martinson makes it a point of thanking Daddy for his help before they leave. Cam's all twisted up inside, and he wants nothing more than to hide under the table and never crawl back out. But all he does is slump down and brace himself for the aftermath.

"I'll call around, see if anyone I still know knows anything," his daddy says, in a low voice, when it's just them again. "See if I can figure out where they're from and what they want. See if I can figure out what that boy's gotten himself into." 

There's disapproval there, but Cam knows it won't matter. JD might not be family to Daddy, but Cam is, and Daddy knows enough to know that what concerns JD concerns Cam, too. Daddy might not like it, but it doesn't mean he won't deal with it. It doesn't matter how much you disapprove, family's still family. He opens his mouth to protest, because he knows his daddy still knows enough people, here and there, to accidentally stumble on something he shouldn't -- not enough information to figure out what's going on, but enough to put him in more danger -- but thank the Lord, Spence is already there to save him.

"I'll do it, Uncle Everett," Spence says, quick and firm. "I know more people who might know something than you do. Uncle Cam, can I use the phone in your office?"

Translation, _I wanna talk to you_ , and Cam grits his teeth and gets himself upright again. He unstraps AJ and hands him over to Momma. Momma's looking at him like they're going to have words, and Cam is suddenly _fucking sick_ of unpleasant conversations with his family. He wishes to God they'd gone back to Austin first, before all of this got set into motion. Except then he wouldn't have anyone at all, and maybe that would be more of a burden than doing it this way.

"Yeah," he says, to Spence. "You can help me clean up the mess they left."

Back out to the office -- oh, the walk is getting further every time Cam takes it, today, and he's grateful for the space to call his own, but he wishes the outbuildings weren't so damn _far_ \-- and Spence is looking at him the whole way, but he keeps his mouth shut until they're both ensconced in the office with the door locked. And it might be three o'clock in the afternoon, and he might have taken his pills half an hour earlier, but Cam fumbles out the keys to the desk and pulls out the bottle of Scotch and the two glasses he's got stashed in the bottom drawer anyway, because if any day's a day for drinking before the five o'clock whistle, it's today.

"Let me get that," Spence says, and Cam surrenders the bottle with nothing more than a faint sigh of irritation. Spence means well. And Cam owes him a lot, after running interference today. 

"How'd it go while we were out here?" he asks. He knocks back the shot Spence holds out for him -- not as much as he would have portioned out for himself, but yeah, probably better to have let Spence pour; Cam's got a heavy hand when he's stressed, and he's been trying to watch himself, because all of his shrinks in rehab told him to be careful of using alcohol as a crutch and he doesn't want to find himself falling. "How bad am I gonna have to clean up when I go back in there?"

Spence pours himself a double and drinks half. His face is thoughtful. "Not too badly, I don't think. Aunt Sassy knows something's up. She kept giving Martinson the end-run. He _was_ the one you were playing for, right?"

"Yeah," Cam says. He's not surprised that Spence saw it; he's been nothing but impressed by how Spence has been handling himself through all of this. He always knew his cousin was damn smart, but smart _and_ quick is a blessing. "And the General says that JD made it in, they think, and there's nothing to make him think that Ba'al's not buying the story. Plays to all his weaknesses, JD says. All goes right, JD's on his way to being Ba'al's right-hand-guy right about now."

The frustrated clone. The Xerox. The discard, used and abandoned, thrown away. Somewhere on the other side of the country, Cam knows -- maybe now, maybe yesterday, maybe tomorrow -- JD will be walking into the Farrow-Marshall headquarters, walking straight up to Ba'al, and telling Ba'al exactly who and what he is. The copy, pushed aside, trying to build a life for himself and shove down all his thoughts of vengeance and retribution, until it turns out that his lover is friends with the people who wrote him out of the story. Enough to push him over. Enough to kindle that slow and burning anger that Ba'al knows full well JD, _O'Neill_ , is capable of. _You and me, Skippy, we've got issues, and I don't like you and I'd kill you in a heartbeat, but you're the only one who can help me get revenge. Against him. Against them. Whatever you're planning, sign me up. As long as I get to be the one who kills him._

JD says it's going to work. JD says Ba'al trusts enlightened self-interest more than he would ever trust another Goa'uld, no matter how much use Ba'al could get out of the information tucked inside JD's skull. JD says he'll sing like a canary and tell Ba'al everything he wants to know, string him along right proper, and JD says he can make sure the thought of putting a snake in JD's head never crosses Ba'al's mind. JD says O'Neill will be able to feed corroboration, back through the people Ba'al has planted in the NID, and JD says he can give Ba'al a good enough show that Ba'al won't ever doubt. 

JD said _trust me_. 

"That's good," Spence says, but he sounds dubious, and Cam knows why. Because the risk isn't that they won't be getting JD back alive. The risk is that what they get back might look like JD and walk like JD and talk like JD, with JD trapped somewhere behind the snake's eyes, screaming.

JD made Cam promise, before he left. If it comes down to it, if there isn't any other choice, Cam's going to have to be the one to free him. 

And it's all too much, it's all too raw, and the glass that was in Cam's hand makes a beautiful fragile sound as it crashes against the back of the office door and splinters to the floor. Spence doesn't move, doesn't even flinch, and Cam can't bring himself to look over to see the sympathy in those knowing eyes. "I want this to be over," Cam says, into the silence. "I want this to not be happening."

"I know you do," Spence says, and gets up to sweep up the glass.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [baby needs a new pair of shoes](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6456031) by [ivorygates](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ivorygates/pseuds/ivorygates), [synecdochic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/synecdochic/pseuds/synecdochic)
  * [another country](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6456163) by [synecdochic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/synecdochic/pseuds/synecdochic)
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